The Maharashtra unit president of the Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO) was detained here on Wednesday in connection with a case of alleged hate speech, an official said.
Salman Ahmad was taken into custody from Kurla, Central Mumbai, in a joint operation by the Mumbai and Nanded police, he said.
The 32-year-old state SIO chief is facing a case in Nanded where he has been booked for allegedly giving provocative speech during an anti-CAA protest in the central Maharashtra district, the official said.
Ahmad has been charged under IPC sections 109 (abetting an offence), 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) by the Nanded police, he said.
Acting on a tip-off, officials from Crime Branch of the Nanded police and their counterparts in Mumbai apprehended Ahmad, said Vijay Magar, Superintendent of Police, Nanded.
"He is being interrogated by our team and we will later decide whether to place him under arrest or release him," Magar said.
Meanwhile, Ahmad has denied the charges levelled against him by the police.
"There was nothing inflammatory in my speech. There has been a malicious attempt by a section in the media and individuals to defame me by editing and promoting a small portion of my speech out of context," the SIO quoted Ahmad as saying in a statement issued late in the night.
This is nothing but an effort to discredit the entire movement against the CAA-NRC-NPR, he said in the statement, adding poor understanding of Urdu idioms and phrases used in speech had also resulted in altering the meaning of some of the remarks.
The SIO leader denounced the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), saying it was discriminatory and against values enshrined in the Constitution.
I have decided to file a defamation suit against the individuals and media which maliciously ran communal propaganda using contents of my speech, he said.
"Our fight is for saving the country, its Constitution and the constitutional values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Laws like CAA are against these values as they discriminate against Muslims on the basis of their religion, Ahmad added.
On its website, the SIO has described itself as an ideological organisation working in the country since its inception on October 19, 1982, for the social progress and development of the student fraternity.