A Gujarat court on Tuesday acquitted Congress legislator and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani and six others in a 2016 case registered against them for unlawful assembly and rioting.

The court of additional metropolitan magistrate PN Goswami acquitted Mevani, Manabhai Pateliya, Ramesh Bariya, Mukesh Patel, Dashrath Pagi, Meesh Narsinh, and Darshan Pathadiya, who were booked on the charges of unlawful assembly, rioting and causing damage to public property.

They were accused of damaging a police vehicle, shouting slogans and rioting while being taken to a stadium under detention for organising a protest at the Income Tax crossroads in the city to support the cause of sanitation workers of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation in September 2016.

A first information report (FIR) was registered against Mevani and the others at Navrangpura police station under sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 146 (rioting), 147, 294 (obscene act in a public place), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 341 (wrongful restatement), etc. of the Indian Penal Code, and provisions of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.

According to the prosecution, they had damaged police vehicles and beaten up a police driver while being taken under detention from the Income Tax crossroads to a police stadium for organising a protest without prior permission. Mevani won the December 2022 assembly election from the Vadgam seat as a Congress candidate and is a working president of the party’s state unit.