Kolkata, Aug 18 (PTI) Jadavpur University alumnus Hindol Majumdar, accused of plotting an attack on West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu’s convoy on the varsity campus in March, was on Monday granted bail by a Kolkata court, five days after his arrest at Delhi airport.
Majumdar was produced before the Alipore court following the expiry of the tenure of three-day police custody.
The court granted bail to the accused on a surety of Rs 1,000.
The accused, a researcher at a Spanish university, was held at Delhi airport on Wednesday, after he landed from Europe in the wake of a lookout circular notice issued against him.
The court ruled in favour of Majumdar’s bail after his counsel submitted that there was no visible progress in the police investigation against him.
Opposing the bail prayer, the Kolkata Police argued that his release could affect the “smooth progress of investigation”, and prayed for his judicial custody.
The prosecution also pleaded that Majumdar, if released, could tamper with evidence and influence witnesses.
On Friday, the court had remanded Majumdar to police custody after the chief police prosecutor submitted that even though the accused was away in Spain at the time of the incident, he was the prime conspirator in the attack on the minister’s car and “masterminded” the violence.
The counsel compared Majumdar’s alleged involvement to the attack on the American Centre in Kolkata in January 2022, where the mastermind Aftab Ansari, now serving a life sentence, planned the sabotage operation while sitting in Dubai.
On Monday, the police submitted in court a purported WhatsApp chat history of Majumdar with some of the JU students in support of its claim of the accused plotting the attack on the minister.
The magistrate questioned why the prosecution did not slap relevant sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000, against the accused.
“In order to establish criminal conspiracy and book my client under relevant sections of the IT Act, the police required an ascertainment from the forensic sciences laboratory that those conversations happened from devices of the accused. Clearly, the police failed to establish that,” Defense counsel Gopal Halder said.
Maintaining that Majumdar’s name did not feature in the FIR connected to the JU campus violence incident, Halder said the court had earlier allowed custody of the accused in connection to a separate case.
The police submitted in court that Majumdar was “thoroughly interrogated” during his custody, and his statements were recorded under Section 180 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023. The police also collected relevant materials from the accused and verified their content.
“From the police prosecutor’s submission today, it was evident they had no requirement for further custodial interrogation. There is no visible progress in the investigation. My client was framed,” Halder alleged.
Meanwhile, former and current students of the varsity alongside teachers, researchers and non-teaching staff, led by the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (JUTA), took out a protest rally from the institution’s main campus on Monday afternoon, demanding immediate and unconditional release of Majumdar, who they designated as a “mass-movement worker”.
“This arrest is nothing but a farce and a joke. This government is trying to convert Bengal into a police state,” alleged Ambikesh Mahapatra, a former teacher at the university.
Mahapatra was himself arrested in 2012 for circulating a satirical picture collage of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the internet.
“We do not believe that Majumdar was in any way involved in the campus violence in question. He is a bright student and the police are making up stories. Their claim that he plotted the violence sitting in Spain and comparing him with terrorist Aftab Ansari is ridiculous. This only goes to show that free thinkers who speak up against the state atrocities are the soft targets in Bengal,” a former student said.
JUTA secretary Parth Pratim Ray asserted that the arrest defied all logic and was a reflection of “vendetta politics” of the ruling establishment.
“This is a means to divert attention from the real issues in the state’s education sector, where JEE results remain pending for months and admission to colleges and universities are in doldrums,” he claimed.
On March 1, Basu was at the varsity’s main campus to attend a meeting of the Trinamool Congress-backed professors’ body, WBCUPA. On his way out, the minister faced demonstrations from Left-wing outfits, including the SFI, which were demanding that the long-pending students’ union elections be conducted at the earliest.
Basu had alleged that he was physically heckled by the protestors and his car vandalised.
The agitating students, however, had claimed that the minister’s car ran over a student who suffered an eye injury. PTI SMY RBT
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