Kolkata: DYFI functionary Kalatan Dasgupta was arrested by Bidhannagar police on Saturday for allegedly plotting an attack on the doctors’ protest site at Salt Lake. This is the second arrest in the suo motu complaint lodged by the cops following Trinamool’s ex-Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh releasing an audio conversation on Friday. In the audio tape, two persons were heard planning a purported attack on protesting doctors and allegedly blame it on Trinamool.
Cops claimed the first arrested person, Sanjib Das from Haltu, had already admitted that one of the voices on tape was his and he was the one who gave away Dasgupta’s name, following which he was picked up from a Left activists’ sit-in site at Phears Lane on Saturday morning.Dasgupta, while being taken into ECPS police station, claimed it was an attempt by the state to divert people’s attention from the ongoing movement seeking justice for the rape-murder victim. CPM seniors said the voice could be an “AI-generated fake audio”.
“The top leader of the ruling party speaks of the misuse of AI against mass movement but their own IT cell excels in using deepfakes and fabricated clips. This is nothing but a targeted harassment of a determined young political activist. We demand the unconditional release of Kalatan Dasgupta and call for an investigation and prosecute those who created such false evidence,” said Mohammad Salim, the secretary of CPM’s state committee.
Addressing a press conference on Friday, Ghosh played an audio clip and claimed that some Left and ultra-Left party workers had conspired to attack the doctors while a team had gone to Nabanna to meet the CM on Thursday evening to tarnish the reputation of the govt. On Saturday, DC Bidhannagar Anish Sarkar said they had access to the audio clip by Friday afternoon and had started a suo motu case.
“Our technical analysis wing and detective wing immediately began an investigation and were quick to confirm the genuineness of the audio clip. We picked up Sanjib Das on Friday and, questioning him and tracing the call records and tower location, we arrested Kalatan Dasgupta,” said Sarkar, adding they would be pleading for 14 days of police custody for the duo. Cops said they were also trying to ascertain the identity of three persons – ‘Saheb’, ‘Dadu’ and ‘Bappada’ – who were referred to in the call.
Terming the arrests as “illegal and vindictive”, Salim said the incident reminded them of the tactics previously used by the BJP govt to defame the farmers' movement in Delhi.
Unwilling to comment if the arrests were genuine or not, BJP’s Samik Bhattacharya questioned how Kunal Ghosh got access to the clips and why he released them before the cops or the administration could. In their response, Ghosh said: “The audio leak happened from people within the same camp who had plotted attacks on doctors. It is the police’s duty to verify the audio's authenticity.”