Alipore court on Saturday granted bail to 55 women and remanded four men in judicial custody after police produced the group of 59 school job aspirants arrested on Friday close to chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence.
The protesters, demanding school jobs, had converged at the Hazra crossing on Friday afternoon. Some of them managed to break the police cordon and march towards the chief minister’s residence from the gate that leads to Kalighat temple on the opposite side.
A team of officers from Kalighat police station intervened and stopped the protesters on the way before arresting them on a slew of charges, including one under section 353 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that deals with deterring a public servant from discharging his duty, “unlawful assembly” under section 143 of the IPC and voluntarily obstructing a public servant from discharging his public functions.
Since one of the charges of deterring a public servant from discharging duty is non-bailable, the protesters were sent to the central lockup in Lalbazar where they spent Friday night.
The arrested protesters were produced before Alipore court on Saturday afternoon.
Arguing in support of the custody of the accused, the police told the court that the assembly was illegal since the protesters did not have any permission.
The advocate representing the protesters said the youths were unarmed and there was no threat to the chief minister.
“There was nothing ‘dangerous’ in our bags except a few books, a pen and documents to show that we had cleared the recruitment test for the said post. If police believe these are ‘dangerous’ items it’s really sad,” one of the protesters later said.
After hearing both sides, the court granted bail to the women protesters with a condition that they won’t be allowed to enter the area under the jurisdiction of Kalighat police station.
The four men were remanded in jail custody till Monday.