In a severe blow to the Mamata Banerjee government in the cartoon episode, the West Bengal Human Rights Commission (WBHRC) has held two police officers guilty for arresting chemistry professor of the Jadavpur University Ambikesh Mahapatra and his neighbour Subrata Sengupta.
The WBHRC has recommended departmental proceedings against the cops and has directed the government to compensate the affected.
The only fault of Prof. Mahapatra and Mr Sengupta, who were arrested from a housing cooperative in April, was that they had circulated a cartoon bantering chief minister Mamata Banerjee, present railway minister Mukul Roy and his predecessor Dinesh Trivedi on the Internet through emails and on a popular social networking site. The duo was later granted bail from the court instead of the Purba Jadavpur police station. This had triggered a massive public outcry. Even as the government justified the police action, the human rights body had taken a suo moto cognisance of the incident and started a probe.
On Monday, WBHRC chairperson Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly and its two members indicted Milan Das, an inspector posted as the additional officer-in-charge at the Purba Jadavpur police station and his subordinate Sanjoy Biswas, a sub-inspector, for their role in the case.
The commission also recommended the state government to initiate departmental proceedings against them within six weeks. Besides, the government has been asked by the commission to pay `50,000 each to Prof. Mahapatra and Mr Sengupta as compensation within six weeks for the “manner” in which they were arrested from their residential complex and lodged in a police station in a case which is a “non-cognisable offence