Kolkata: Condemning the arrests made following the protest march over the alleged NEET paper leak in Kolkata on Friday, Bengal’s left student bodies and the Cockroach Janta Party demanded “all false cases against students and protesters be dropped”.Eight left organisations — AISA, AIDSO, AISB, AISF, DYSA, SFI, PDSF and PSU — have called a rally on Tuesday at 2.30 pm from Sealdah to College Street, demanding scrapping of NTA, withdrawal of all false cases filed against the protesters and a resistance against NEP 2020.Alleging “breach of trust” on the part of govts, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das said in a post on X, “We are deeply concerned by multiple reports reaching us of students and other protesters being targeted, detained or arrested by various state agencies, particularly in Assam, West Bengal and Bihar.”Speaking to TOI, AISA state president Ritam Majhi said: “We have condemned the attack on journalists. But … taking advantage of the incident, students and youths from minority communities are being arrested and harassed.” AISA members were present at Sunday’s court proceedings. AISA also condemned the barefoot parading of an accused “in the name of scene recreation”. “This is medieval barbarism,” Majhi said.SFI central executive committee member Shuvajit Sarkar said that the movement will not stop with Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. “Our demands of the scrapping of NTA are unfulfilled,” he said, while condemning the “targeted arrests” of “individuals based on their surnames”.On this, an AIDSO press statement stated, “The state govt has already arrested 16 people. The majority of them belong to the Muslim community. The highly undemocratic and anti-human rights ‘Anti-Goonda Act’ must be repealed. One of the main demands of the ongoing movement across India is that no legal cases can be filed against the protesters.”
