NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court is likely to hear on Tuesday a PIL seeking immediate release of persons allegedly illegally detained by police since January 26 in connection with the protests on Republic Day.
The petition, by a Delhi resident, is listed on Tuesday before a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh.
The petitioner, a law graduate, claims that he has come to know through news reports and social activists that people were detained from the Singhu, Ghaziabad and Tikri borders.
The petitioner, Harman Preet Singh, further states in his petition, filed through advocates Ashima Mandla and Mandakini Singh, that Delhi Police on January 27 said that it has detained over 200 persons in connection with the violence in the national capital on January 26 and 22 FIRs have also been registered thus far.
The petition contends that assuming that the FIRs have been registered against the 200 detained persons, not signing of arrest memos, or informing next of kin and not producing them before a magistrate "falls within the contours of illegal detention".
The tractor parade on January 26 that was to highlight the demands of farmer unions to repeal three new agri laws dissolved into anarchy on the streets of the national capital as thousands of protesters broke through barriers, fought with the police, overturned vehicles and hoisted a religious flag from the ramparts of the iconic Red Fort.
On January 12, the Supreme Court had stayed the implementation of the contentious new farm laws till further orders and constituted a four-member committee to make recommendations to resolve the impasse over them between the Centre and farmers' unions protesting at Delhi borders.
Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi for over two months now against the three laws -- the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act.