Cultural personalities Chandan Sen, Bimal Chakraborty, Debdut Ghosh, Manasi Sinha and Subhaprasad Nandi Majundar, at a meeting at Barrackpore on Friday, held the Narendra Modi government accountable for the death of 84-year-old Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy.

The ailing activist, arrested in a case in which rights activists stand accused of having Maoist links, died in a Mumbai hospital on Monday while awaiting bail.

The meeting, held under the banner of the Left-backed socio-cultural outfit Platform for Education Literature Culture, demanded an independent probe preferably by a retired Supreme Court judge into the death of Fr Stan.

Calling his death “institutional murder”, playwright-director Sen said: “If the Centre has nothing to hide, it should allow judicial inquiry.”