West Bengal: Man arrested for making anti-Mamata remark on Facebook

Malda: A man was arrested in Malda district of West Bengal on the charge of making a derogatory remark against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Facebook.

The police said that Bapi Pal (25) of Janakinagar village, who worked as a Civic Police Volunteer, but now unemployed, was arrested on Tuesday night after a Trinamool Congress supporter filed a complaint at Harishchandrapur police station.

Pal was produced before a local court today which remanded him in 14-day judicial custody. It was not immediately known as to what was the content of the post. The Civic Police Volunteer Force was introduced by the Kolkata civic body in 2008 to assist Kolkata Police in traffic management.

A Jadavpur University professor was arrested in April 2012, for posting a cartoon on Facebook featuring Banerjee with the then Railway Minister Mukul Roy and his predecessor Dinesh Trivedi.

The 2012 cartoon had showed the chief minister and the railway minister exchanging dialogues from popular Bengali film 'Sonar Kella', a detective thriller by Satyajit Ray, which alluded to the replacement of Trivedi by Roy as Railway Minister.

The arrests had triggered angry reaction from opposition CPI-M which dubbed the police action as "atrocious" and an assault on the fundamental right of freedom of expression and a grim reminder of oppression during Emergency.