An allegedly inebriated Kolkata Police civic volunteer riding a police bike was arrested early on Saturday after he tried to force his way through a barricaded stretch of BT Road where students of Rabindra Bharati University were staging a protest against the rape and murder of the RG Kar doctor.

The civic volunteer was in plain clothes and had a red helmet on him when protesting students stopped him while he tried to make his way through the stretch, near Sinthee in north Calcutta.

A traffic sergeant reached the spot soon and allegedly came to the volunteer’s rescue, moving him away from the students and allowing him to drive down BT Road.

Furious about how the volunteer was shielded and made to leave the spot, the RBU students refused to move, bringing traffic to a halt for around five hours along one of the flanks of the busy BT Road on Saturday morning.

The blockade was withdrawn around 8.30am after police lodged an FIR against 38-year-old Gangasagar Gond and arrested him.

“The civic volunteer has been arrested for driving rashly and in a negligent manner in a drunken state. A specific case was drawn up against him at Cossipore police station, suo motu. The volunteer has been demobilised,” a senior officer of the Kolkata Police said.

The case against Gond at the Cossipore police station was drawn up under section 281 of the Bharatiya Naya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 and 185 of the Motor Vehicles Act, the police said.

The first deals with rash driving or riding and invites a penalty of up to ₹1,000 and six months of imprisonment. The second refers to driving under the influence of alcohol and invites a fine of up to ₹2000 and/or imprisonment up to six months.

While Gond was arrested, traffic sergeant Tarakeswar Puri, who rescued him, was shifted to the headquarters force (HF) later in the day, a senior police officer said.

The arrest on Saturday again put the scanner on lawless police volunteers.

One of them, Sanjay Roy, is now in CBI custody in connection with the rape and murder of the junior doctor of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. Since Roy’s arrest, questions have been aplenty on how these personnel, who often act as the police, are recruited.

Mayor Firhad Hakim said on Saturday it would be wrong to generalise all civic volunteers as “criminal”.

“Not all civic volunteers are like this. One or two may be criminal or may have committed a crime. But it would not be proper to generalise,” Hakim said.

An unverified video released by the university students agitating on BT Road showed the civic volunteer on his motorcycle pleading for forgiveness for trying to
make his way through the barricade.