The Andhra Pradesh police continue to deny any relief to YouTuber ‘Prashna’ Raavan by invoking fresh cases against him, prolonging his detention despite repeated setbacks in court.
On the night of Friday, July 4, Raavan was arrested yet again after a Magistrate in Machilipatnam refused the police’s plea to send him to judicial remand. This marked his fourth arrest since he was first taken into custody on June 30.
Raavan (Joseph) was initially detained by the Pithapuram police for allegedly making “objectionable remarks” against Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan. A Magistrate granted him bail on July 1, but he was immediately re-arrested by the Sarpavaram police in connection with a separate case registered in 2025.
The Sarpavaram case stems from a video uploaded on Raavan’s YouTube channel ‘Prashna’, in which he interviewed children who alleged caste discrimination at a government school in Yendapalli, located in Pawan Kalyan’s Pithapuram constituency. Police charged him under Section 95 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), accusing him of engaging children to commit an offence.
On July 2, a Magistrate again refused to remand Raavan to judicial custody in the Sarpavaram case, according to his lawyer and politician Jada Sravan Kumar. On Friday, the Machilipatnam Magistrate similarly rejected the prosecution’s remand request, making it the third such rejection after the courts at Pithapuram and Sarpavaram.
According to Jada Sravan Kumar, nearly 35 cases have been registered against Raavan across Andhra Pradesh. He alleged that the police are prepared to keep arresting him in one case after another until they succeed in obtaining judicial remand.
Meanwhile, on July 2, the Jana Sena party workers who had gathered outside the Sarpavaram police station attempted to attack Raavan. They were seen throwing eggs at the police vehicle in which Raavan was being taken for a medical examination.