Torture, TMC style? Ill SFI activist chained to hospital bed

, April 17: In recent times activists associated with Students' Federation of India (

) are bearing the brunt of Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in

.

After the tragic death of 23-year-old Sudipto Gupta, a SFI activist allegedly due to police brutality in Kolkata on April 2, another arrested SFI activist was chained to his hospital bed in West Bengal.

Media reports say Santosh Sahani (21), a student of Surya Sen College who lives in Siliguri's Bagrakote, was arrested with around 50 Left activists on April 10. After he fell ill, Santosh was admitted to North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH) on Tuesday (April 15).

Treating him like cattle, the Siliguri Police used handcuffs on the student's left leg to chain him to the hospital bed on grounds that it could not depute policemen to keep a watch on him.

A senior police official of Siliguri Special Jail said Santosh was confined to the bed in the male general ward and cuffs were put on his left leg as there was no guard to watch over him.

Santosh, a student, was arrested after the clash between CPM and Trinamool supporters on Hill Cart Road. Moreover, Santosh's university examinations are scheduled on Thursday, April 18.

"The person is an undertrial, not a convict. How could the police chain him? It is inhuman and violation of human rights. Such surveillance has been done away with in the Seventies," said rights activist Sujato Bhadra.

Eye-witnesses said that Sudipto died as police had badly beaten him up and threw him out of the bus, where he and his fellow SFI protesters were bundled into after they protested against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's decision of not allowing elections in colleges.

But, Mamata and other Trinamool Congress leaders, along with police maintain that Sudipto's death was an accident.

SFI General Secretary Satarup Ghosh, an eyewitness himself, said, "He was hit on his head so hard that one of his eyes came out."

"We were courting arrest when the policemen started beating us in the bus. One of the policemen hit Sudipto's head with a lathi and he fell down. When we demanded immediate medical help for him, the police refused," Ghosh said.

"There was a scuffle inside the bus as the students shouted slogans. One of the students hit a lamp post and was critically injured," Javed Shamim, Joint Commissioner of Police, Law and Order, said.

Moreover, post-mortem report say that Sudipto's body bears several injuries, thus rejecting government's theory that it was an accident.

OneIndia News