Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra cleared by court after an 11-year-long legal battle.
NEW DELHI: After a long legal battle of 11 years against the might of the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-led West Bengal government, Ambikesh Mahapatra, the 62-year-old Chemistry professor of Jadavpur University, is a free man now as the Alipore Court last week discharged Mahapatra of all the criminal cases that he was booked under by the Bengal government.
The “crime” under which Mahapatra and his 72-year-old friend Subrata Sengupta were arrested by the West Bengal police on the night of 12 April 2012 was for sharing a cartoon of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the then national general secretary of TMC Mukul Roy.
On the night of 12 April, 2012, Mahapatra had shared a cartoon over email to a group of his friends that consisted of a dialogue between Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy who was appointed by Banerjee as the Railway Minister of India after removing Dinesh Trivedi from the said post right after presenting the railway budget.
While discharging Mahapatra of all criminal charges on 18 January this year, the Additional Sessions Judge of Alipore District Court said, “The discharge petition by the accused/petitioner Ambikesh Mahapatra is allowed. He stands discharged. The bail bonds are discharged accordingly.” The Alipore Additional Sessions Judge also criticised the Alipore Chief Metropolitan Magistrate for overlooking sections of law for not discharging Mahapatra of cases filed against him. In his final order, the Judge said, “I am of the clear view that the impugned order cannot be sustained. The Ld. CJM, Alipore had not taken into consideration the effect of section 362 CrPC vis-a-vis his desire to look into the case diary to find out “as to whether any case under Section 500/509 of the IPC or any other law can be made out” against the accused/petitioner. The Ld. CJM was unmindful of the fact that the rejection order by the Ld. ACJM was on merits.”
In the long battle for justice, Mahapatra lost his co-accused and Septuagenarian friend Subrata Sengupta in 2019 and since then, Mahapatra had been fighting his legal battle all alone against the state government that had slapped charges against him under the now abolished Section 66A of the Information Technology Act and sections of the IPC that deals with defamation and outraging women’s modesty.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Mahapatra said that it was a tiresome and a long battle against the mighty state government and its Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who had used the entire police force to harass and punish for just sharing a cartoon on her. “The fight was very tough; it was a very long and difficult fight as it was a fight between unequals. On the one hand, I was an individual fighting against a government who had the police, the courts, the intelligence agencies and all sorts of agencies at their disposal. I have lost 11 years of life, having faced mental trauma, agony, running from pillar to post to get justice for no crime. Can the West Bengal police, or the TMC or for that matter the Chief Minister return those years?” Mahapatra told The Sunday Guardian.
Mahapatra also narrated how he had difficulty in even renewing his passport as he was slapped with criminal cases by the Bengal police. He also said that he had to face humiliation and suspicion from society.
“All these years I have not only been fighting for myself, but for the defence of democracy. In West Bengal, TMC goons and their diktats rule the roost. They can arrest anybody and slap false charges against them and harass them for years. The police are a puppet of the state government here in West Bengal,” Mahapatra told this newspaper. Narrating what went down on 12 April, 2012, when Mahapatra was picked up by the police from his residence in a housing cooperative society in Jadavpur in Kolkata at about 11 PM, he said, “Some 60 to 70 TMC goons had come and gheraoed my office and held me hostage. They were abusing me and some had even started beating me up. When I asked them, what happened, they said that I have hurt their feelings because I had shared a cartoon of the Chief Minister and their leader Mamata Banerjee and I would be punished for that.”
Mahapatra was arrested by the Jadavpur Police at around 11 PM, along with three of his friends, and kept in police custody for one day. He also said that initially the police had just slapped section 66A of the IT Act, but later on added criminal cases under section 500 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The arrest was based on a complaint by one named Amit Sardar, who represented himself in the complaint letter sent to the police as “local TMC worker”.
The battle of Mahapatra against the state government had also reached the State Human Rights Commission which was then headed by Justice Ashok Kumar Ganguly where the Jadavpur police had accepted that they had arrested Mahapatra without even seeing the alleged cartoon that he had circulated and for which charges are being framed against him.
“No law in our country prevents criticism against Ministers or Chief Minister, however popular they may be or even a door-to-door critical campaign against Ministers unless the campaign offends any prohibition in law. At the time of their arrest from the office of the Society, the police did not even know the nature of the campaign or contents of the e-mail. Police did not arrest anyone from the group of people who were forcibly confining those two arrestees in the office of the Society though Shri Sanjoy Biswas, S.I. of Police, admitted that a cognizable case under Section 341 IPC was made,” the West Bengal State Human Rights Commission in its report in 2012 said.
The Commission had also observed that the criminal cases under Section 500 and 509 of the IPC was “invalid” and had recommended departmental proceedings against the police officers of the Jadavpur police station who arrested Mahapatra and had also asked the state government to compensate Mahapatra and Subrata Sengupta with Rs 50,000 within six weeks. However the West Bengal government did not compensate the two even till date. Mahapatra also told this newspaper that he had moved the Calcutta High Court after West Bengal did not comply with the WBHRC recommendations and the High Court had also upheld the observation of the Commission; however, despite that, the state government failed to comply.