Scientist Partho Sarathi Ray, who was arrested on April 8 for staging a demonstration against an eviction drive in a slum in the Nonadanga area here, was granted bail by a local court on Tuesday.
The arrest of Dr. Ray, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) here evoked severe criticism. A group of more than 50 social activists and academicians from universities in India and abroad, including Noam Chomsky, wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, seeking his intervention in the matter.
Of the six others arrested along with him, four remain in jail and they will be produced in court on April 26. The two others — Debolina Chakravorty and Abhigyan Sarkar — have been named in other cases also and remanded in police custody.
“The police have been asked to present the case diary in the court on Tuesday. At the court, counsel for the State said the police did not have any statements to make against him [Dr. Ray], but have objections to the grant of bail to the other six accused. After this, the bail was granted,” Sankar Mukherjee, counsel for the arrested, told The Hindu.
Defence counsel told the court that there was documentary evidence to prove that Dr. Ray was not even present at a rally organised on a previous occasion, where the police had resorted to a baton charge to disperse the protesters.
On April 4, Dr. Ray was on the IISER campus in Nadia district to attend a faculty meeting of the Department of Biological Sciences. He was at the institute's guest house through the night and checked out only the next day, Mr. Mukherjee said.
Though these documents were produced in the court immediately after his arrest, Dr. Ray was not granted bail.
All the seven were first remanded in police custody and later in judicial custody.
