Assam peasant leader Akhil Gogoi was sent to judicial custody after being produced at the National Investigation Agency’s special court in Guwahati on Thursday.
Mr. Gogoi, who has been shifted from one jail to another in a series of cases including sedition, was brought from the jail in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh on Wednesday. He was produced at the NIA court in a case registered at the Chabua police station in Dibrugarh district during the violent protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019.
“The country is in the grip of a dictatorship. The present crisis is because the government has been taking one wrong decision after the other, but is in no mood to listen to those who point this out,” Mr. Gogoi told newspersons outside the court.
The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti leader had been granted bail by the special court on March 17 in a case pertaining to anti-national activities for which he was arrested on December 16. The bail was granted because the NIA could not file a chargesheet against him within the stipulated 90 days of his stay in jail.
Mr. Gogoi was, however, arrested in one of several other cases against him despite getting bail. He was accordingly handed over to the police in Sivasagar district on March 19.
On April 7, the Gauhati High Court issued an interim stay order on the bail in the case accusing him of being a Maoist.
“Keeping him behind bars for raising his voice for the people of Assam is a conspiracy of the government to kill him at a time when the world is battling the deadly novel coronavirus,” his mother Priyada Gogoi said from her residence at Selenghat in the Jorhat district.