Founder and General Secretary of ‘Bangla Paksh’ Professor Garg Chattopadhyay has been arrested for spreading confusion and incitement through social media about Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) during the polls. On Tuesday (May 12), he was arrested by the Lalbazar Cyber Crime Police from the area adjacent to Kolkata’s Deshpriya Park.
According to police and Election Commission sources, Garg had made several posts questioning the reliability of EVMs during various phases of the Lok Sabha elections. The main allegations against him are that on the day of the first round of polling (April 23), he raised questions about the EVM malfunction and claimed that why the machine was malfunctioning in the morning even after testing at night? He tried to create confusion in the public mind by posting that the commission was doing ‘secret planning’ on the day of counting. He urged the political parties to join the movement against EVM rigging.The District Election Officer (DEO) of North Kolkata lodged a written complaint with the Cybercrime Department in this regard. Lalbazar said that Garg Chattopadhyay was summoned twice before but he did not appear. As a result, he was arrested on Tuesday.
After Garg Chatterjee’s arrest, rumors spread on social media that cartridges were recovered from him. However, on behalf of the Bengali side, this claim has been dismissed as completely ‘baseless rumours’. According to the organization, no weapons or cartridges are mentioned in the seizure list given by the police. The organization claims that their general secretary has been arrested for political reasons.
In a press conference in the afternoon, Kolkata Police Commissioner Ajay Nanda said that Garg Chatterjee had misled people on social media by tampering with EVMs. He did not cooperate with the investigation despite repeated opportunities, hence action was taken as per law.
Gorg Chattopadhyay will be produced in court on Wednesday after spending the night in Lalbazar lock-up. After the election, there has been a fresh uproar in Kolkata’s political circles over this arrest.
