Mamata Bannerjee is at it, again. The chief of the Trinamool Congress is in the news this time for jailing peaceful protesters demonstrating against the arrest and detention of a few.

According to a letter to the Prime Minister written by eminent activist Aruna Roy, “An internationally reputed scientist Prof Partho Sarothi Ray, and faculty member of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, was arrested with several others at a peaceful and legitimate protest against eviction of slum dwellers in Nonadanga, Kolkata. He and six others are being held on false charges of inciting violence and conspiring against the State, and are even being denied bail.”

The letter states that there is ample evidence to prove professor Ray was not even present at a protest where he is accused of having inciting violence. Roy further states in the letter that “with every hearing, additional charges are being pressed against him, and he is now being held in police custody till the 26th”.

The letter further attempts to bring into limelight, “the separate case of Prof Ambikash Mahapatra of Jadavpur University, who was again arrested on baseless grounds, with an attempt to restrict his freedom of expression”.

In addition there have been other disturbing incidents of the use of force and coercion by the West Bengal police to break up peaceful protests and suppress democratic protest and dissent, states the letter.

Pointing out that the West Bengal state government was evicting slum dwellers without properly rehabilitating them, the letter states that, “dwellers were evicted using police force without any rehabilitation measures. As a natural protest against this unjustified police action, there were peaceful demonstrations by concerned citizens, for which prior permissions were arranged to the local police. In spite of this, Kolkata police used force and unjustified means to crack down on the demonstrators. It was while participating in a peaceful protest against the eviction of slum dwellers of Nonadanga area of East Kolkata that Dr Ray was arrested along with 68 others including several women and a nine-year-old girl on Sunday, April 8, 2012. Of those arrested, 7 people including Dr Ray have been detained in police custody for several days, and now six of them are put in judicial custody and one in CID custody.”

The letter added that “the police slapped many dubious cases against Dr Ray and others, such as Section 353 (assault on public servant), Section 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to public servant), Section 141 (unlawful assembly), Section 143 (punishment), Section 149 (common objective of disruption) of the IPC”.

Stating that Dr Partho Sarothi Ray is an established scientist in the field of molecular biology, the letter further adds that his scientific research findings have been published in world-class journals including Nature. Dr Ray has also been awarded the Wellcome Trust-India Alliance Intermediate Fellowship in 2010 which is one of the most prestigious honors that a young life scientist in India can receive. He is a faculty of IISER Kolkata, one of the esteemed institutions of higher learning in India under MHRD, according to the letter.

The letter also points out that on 12th April, 2012, human rights activists were attacked and later arrested at a demonstration against the illegal evictions and the detention of Dr Ray and others.

The letter further asks the prime minister to intervene and grant bail and ultimately uphold people’s basic human rights.

A total of fifty-five academic luminaries including Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are signatories to the letter.

Mamata Banerjee has been courting controversies for a long time now. She first transferred a police officer for contradicting her statement on a rape case. Then, she tried to ban English newspapers and magazines from the public libraries (the reason being that they did not feature among her favorites). Banerjee even plans to ban Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from West Bengal’s school history curriculum citing an ‘imbalance’ in textbooks. She even got Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra arrested, and slapped serious charges such as 'defamation' and 'outraging the modesty of women' against him for circulating a humorous caricature featuring the chief minister on the internet.

“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech,” said Benjamin Franklin in the year 1722. Perhaps, Mamata Banerjee has never heard or read these words.