india

Updated: Oct 30, 2019 23:04 IST

The Bengal police arrested a government employee from Singur in the state’s Hooghly district on Wednesday for an obscene post on social media against chief minister Mamata Banerjee, police said.

The post by Chandhan Bhattacharya (30), an employee of the state irrigation department, had raised a storm with people from all quarters condemning him for the invectives he used.

“Bhattacharya has been arrested on the basis of specific complaint,” said Tathagata Basu, superintendent of police (rural), Hooghly district.

After the arrest, Bhattacharya claimed that he was a nephew of local Trinamool Congress legislator Rabindranath Bhattacharya but the latter dismissed it.

“The man is not linked to my family in any way. He should be punished for what he has done. I cannot help if someone claims to be my relative,” the lawmaker said.

Bhattacharya wrote the post after the chief minister uploaded some photos of Kali Puja at her residence where she was seen cooking food for the devotees.

Santanu Banerjee, district president of Trinamool Youth Congress lodged the complaint against Bhattacharya at Singur police station. “Bhattacharya wrote posts in the past too, in which he insulted the chief minister, the government and our party. But we chose to ignore those,” said Banerjee. “This time however he crossed the limits of civility and used invectives that nobody should use against any woman,” Banerjee added.

There was tension in Singur after Bhattacharya’s arrest. Some angry TMC supporters tried to assault him when he was being taken to court. The TMC workers demanded that he should be handed over to them.

A few days ago Sanmoy Banerjee, a state Congress leader, was arrested from the Panihati area in North 24 Parganas district on similar charge. He was arrested by the Purulia district police on the basis of a complaint which said that he had posted objectionable and insulting material against the chief minister and the government.

In May this year, Priyanka Sharma, a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha worker was arrested in the Howrah district for uploading a morphed photo of the chief minister. She was granted bail by the Supreme Court.