Ahmedabad, Sep 16: A court in Ahmedabad on Friday sentenced Gujarat Congress's working president and MLA Jignesh Mevani and 18 others to six months' simple imprisonment in a 2016 case of rioting.

The case was related to a road blockade agitation staged by Mevani and his associates.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate P N Goswami, who also imposed a fine on Mevani and others, suspended their sentence till October 17 to enable them file appeals.

The case was registered against Mevani and 19 others at the University police station here in 2016 for staging road blockade to press their demand that an under-construction building of the law department of Gujarat University be named for Dr B R Ambedkar.

The First Information Report was registered under Indian Penal Code sections 143 (unlawful assembly) and 147 (rioting) as well as sections of the Gujarat Police Act.

One of the accused died during the pendency of the case.

Mevani, a prominent Dalit leader, won the 2017 Assembly election as an independent with the support of Congress.

The party later made him a working president of its Gujarat unit.

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Bareilly (UP) (PTI): A local court here has sentenced a man to life imprisonment for murdering his mentally challenged wife by repeatedly electrocuting her while she was tied to a cot, lawyers said on Thursday.

Additional district government counsel Harendra Singh Rathore said Additional Sessions Judge Avinash Kumar Singh on Wednesday convicted Vinod Kumar (45) for killing his wife, Satyavati, in Chaina village of Bareilly district and imposed a fine of Rs 15,000 on him.

According to the prosecution, he was allegedly frustrated with his wife Satyavati's mental illness and often assaulted her.

Rathore said the prosecution examined nine witnesses to establish the charges against him.

As per court records, on the night of May 1-2, 2022, when Satyavati was asleep, Vinod tied her hands and legs to a cot using ropes and then connected an aluminium cable to an electric board to repeatedly administer electric shocks to her.

"She writhed in pain, but the accused continued to electrocute her until she died," the prosecution said.

The court observed that the murder was carried out in an inhuman manner.

After committing the crime, the accused threw the rope and cable on the roof and left for work at a brick kiln around 2 am to create a false alibi.

He later tried to mislead the police and the victim's family by claiming that Satyavati, whose mental condition was unstable, had accidentally died by suicide after grabbing a live electric wire.

However, the victim's brother, Sanjeev, a resident of Shahjahanpur district, suspected foul play and lodged an FIR under sections 498A (husband subjecting wife to cruelty) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code at Nawabganj police station.

During the trial, the prosecution relied on the post-mortem report prepared by Dr Faraz Anwar, who stated that multiple electrocution marks found on different parts of the victim's body could not have been self-inflicted.

The police also recovered the rope and electric wire used in the crime on the accused's identification, officials said.