New Delhi: A Varanasi court on Monday (March 23) denied bail to the 14 Muslim youth who were arrested last week in connection with allegations that they ate meat on a boat over the Ganga and disposed of the waste in the river.According to Bar and Bench, additional chief judicial magistrate Amit Yadav said in his order that the “crimes committed by the accused were of a serious nature and non-bailable”, due to which “there are no sufficient grounds to grant bail” to them.The men were arrested on Thursday after local BJP youth wing worker Rajat Jaiswal filed a complaint alleging that while breaking their Ramzan fast earlier that week in a boat over the Ganga they ate meat and threw the waste in the river below them.After invoking sections of the BNS pertaining to defiling a place of worship, outraging religious feelings, promoting enmity, fouling the water of a public spring or reservoir, being a public nuisance and disobeying a public servant’s order alongside section 24 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act – which prohibits disposing of polluting material in a stream or well – the police reportedly booked them for extortion later.This is after a boat operator and a relative of his alleged that the men threatened them and forcibly took away the vessel aboard which they broke their fast, the Indian Express reports.Per Bar and Bench, they were also booked under section 67 of the IT Act, which deals with the electronic transmission of obscene content.In court the men’s lawyer argued that they were implicated due to an alleged personal enmity and that neither was any meat recovered from them nor did any video show them eating meat. The prosecution called the accusations against them ‘grave’ and that the defence’s arguments cannot be properly assessed because the investigation is ongoing, per Bar and Bench.Last week the group of youths was remanded to two weeks’ judicial custody.