A group of students from Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University today staged a protest here over the arrest of DU professor G N Saibaba by Maharashtra Police for his alleged links with Maoists.

Demanding immediate release of the professor, around 50 to 60 students staged a demonstration outside Maharashtra Sadan on K G Marg, a senior police official said. The Delhi University professor was arrested yesterday morning on charges of allegedly being a member of a banned organisation (CPI-Maoist), providing logistics and helping in recruitment for the group, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Gadchiroli, Ravindra Kadam had said.

The demonstrators also handed over a memorandum to the Resident Commissioner of Maharashtra Sadan, which was addressed to the Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan. In the memorandum, the student said that the arrest is an attempt to "frame him up" and condemned the "illegal" detention.

The name of Saibaba cropped after the arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru University student Hemant Mishra who had claimed before the probe agencies that he was acting as a courier between the professor and Maoists holed up in the Abujmad forests in Chhattisgarh, official sources said.