Swatantra Bhardwaj, implicated in the assault of a student activist’s father during a protest, faced extensive questioning by police while in custody.
Photo : PTI
Swatantra Bhardwaj, arrested in connection with the alleged assault on a student activist’s father, was shown his viral videos and questioned by multiple police teams during his remand. Bhardwaj was asked more than 100 questions during his remand, news agency PTI quoted a police source as saying. While Bhardwaj answered some of those, he did not respond to others, they said. Bhardwaj was sent to one-day judicial custody on Sunday after his police remand ended.
According to the report, Bharadwaj was showed several viral videos by officials during the questioning. He was confronted with the statement made by him and he showed no sign of remorse during his questioning, the report said.
Swatantra Bhardwaj has been accused of assaulting a student activist’s father during the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in July this year.
Bharadwaj was arrested on Friday after a video clip of an interview went viral, in which he claimed to have “cracked the skull” of the student’s father, and said he escaped being jailed despite the seriousness of the alleged offence and a protest by CJP members at the Parliament Street Police station in the national capital.
He was detained in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr and sent to a daylong police custody by a Delhi court on Saturday.
The Delhi Police has added sections of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the charge of criminal intimidation to the FIR registered over the alleged assault.
A fresh FIR under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was also lodged on a complaint from the minor, who alleged that she was subjected to online threats and harassment after speaking out against the assault on her father.
The Delhi Police had earlier said the injuries suffered by the student activist’s father were “simple in nature”.