Four Youth Congress workers arrested for staging a shirtless protest at the AI Impact Summit venue on Friday were sent to five days' police custody by a Delhi court on Saturday.

The quartet — Krishna Hari, Kundan Yadav, Ajay Kumar and Narasimha Yadav — were produced before Judicial Magistrate First Class Ravi, who allowed the Delhi police to interrogate them for five days.

While seeking their custody, the police said they needed to recover the mobile phones of the accused to unearth the alleged conspiracy, identify the other perpetrators and track down the place where the T-shirts with objectionable slogans were printed.

The police told the court that the arrested accused had raised slogans against the government and waved T-shirts printed with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the summit venue.

Three cops were injured in the melee, the police alleged.

The counsel for the accused told the court that the demonstration was peaceful and the case was politically motivated. The counsel argued that the agitators were members of a political party and had exercised their democratic right to protest peacefully.

The police alleged that the protest was organised along the lines of the Gen-Z agitation in Nepal to defame the country before the world.

The police have lodged a case against the accused under various charges dealing with obstructing public servants from performing their duty, assaulting a public servant and criminal conspiracy, among others.

The protest has triggered a political debate, with several BJP leaders and ministers terming it shameless and aimed at undermining the country’s image before foreign dignitaries.