AAP activists flooded the precincts of Tihar jail once again to stage a peaceful protest, this time over what they say is ‘Arvind’s unlawful release without needing to pay bail’. Arvind refused to budge from Tihar jail, screaming, “how can you take me away before May 23rd? Mein ek aam aadmi hoon [I am a common man],” as he was forcefully evicted. Kejriwal and his supporters now plan to spend the rest of the night outside Tihar jail to demonstrate against his unwarranted release before May 23rd. “We planned to milk this till May 23rd. The magistrate has no right to short-circuit our plans and release him on May 22nd itself,” an irate AAP leader told The Unreal Times.
A few hours earlier, the metropolitan magistrate had rescinded her order remanding the AAP supremo to judicial custody till May 23rd. In her new judgement, the magistrate observed, “Clearly, I was mistaken about Arvind being an aam aadmi. He’s a very special kind of aam aadmi. After getting spooked by the dharna staged by a galaxy of AAP leaders and activists, I feel it was a big mistake remanding Kejri sir to judicial custody. So I order him to be released immediately without needing to pay bail. Also the defamation case filed by Nitin Gadkari stands dismissed. Knowing Kejri sir, he’ll soon be going on another expose spree and the already overburdened justice system will collapse if we keep admitting Arvind Kejriwal defamation suits.”
The judgment was greeted by howls of protests as AAP activists decried the discriminatory treatment being meted out to their leader. “Why is the Arvind being relesed soon when he not pade any bile?” a furious Ashutosh tweeted. Yogendra Yadav, ever the picture of serenity and composure, too was taken aback. “As a law abiding citizen, Arvind is clearly within his rights to continue to be incarcerated till May 23rd as per the original order. Is it a crime to even protest against that?” Yadav wondered.
While most channels have decided to devote a fraction of their prime time coverage to the latest twist in this drama, CNN-IBN plans to move the entire segment to Cyrus Broacha’s news parody show, The Week That Wasn’t. “Broacha’s script writers said they can’t come up with better comedy than this and have asked for cancellation of their show this week. So we had no other option,” TV-18 chairman Raghav Behl told The UnReal Times.