Swatantra Bharadwaj sent to one-day judicial custody in assault case

Self-styled influencer Swatantra Bharadwaj was sent to one-day judicial custody after being produced before a Delhi court via video conferencing. He was held following allegations that he claimed to have assaulted the father of a minor student protestor during a demonstration

New Delhi: Self-styled influencer Swatantra Bharadwaj, who claimed to have physically assaulted a student protestor’s father during the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)-led Jantar Mantar demonstration, was sent to one-day judicial custody on Sunday after he was produced before a court via video conferencing.

A day earlier, Delhi Police had secured one-day police custody of the accused.

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However, Bharadwaj’s counsel, Umesh Sharma, accused the police of “acting completely outside standard legal procedures”.

“The established law requires that whenever someone is arrested, they must be produced before the jurisdictional magistrate within 24 hours. Yesterday, we waited outside the courtroom of the jurisdictional magistrate. Upon discovering that the presiding judge was on leave, we approached the designated link magistrate. However, the police circumvented this by producing him via video conferencing before an entirely different designated SC/ST court and secured a one-day police remand,” he told reporters before the hearing.

Bharadwaj was held by Delhi Police in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district on Friday.

Earlier, the police had assured that it would arrest the accused under provisions of the POCSO Act and SC/ST Act, as well as for attempt to murder, within 72 hours, following an agitation by the CJP outside the Parliament Street Police Station in New Delhi on Friday.

The CJP’s agitation was also joined by Azad Samaj Party chief and MP Chandra Shekhar, Purnea MP Pappu Yadav, and the Indian Youth Congress.

A controversy erupted after Bharadwaj, in a purported viral video, allegedly claimed to have “cracked the skull” of the father of the minor, Nishu Azad, during the demonstration at Jantar Mantar and boasted that he was let off by the Delhi Police as he had “political connections”.

The agitators had sought the registration of an FIR against Bharadwaj under stringent sections and his immediate arrest.

Meanwhile, Union Minister and LJP-RV chief Chirag Paswan, on Friday, claimed that his name had been “misused” by the accused in the purported viral video.

Paswan said that he had lodged an official complaint against Bharadwaj and would ensure justice for the minor victim and her family.