CPM youth leader Kalatan Dasgupta, arrested for allegedly plotting an attack on doctors protesting against the RG Kar brutality, was on Thursday granted bail by Calcutta High Court.

Dasgupta, a leader of the CPM youth wing DYFI, was arrested on Saturday morning. He was the second person to be arrested in the case. The case came to the fore last Friday after Trinamul leader Kunal Ghosh played an audio clip in which two persons were heard “planning an attack on the protest site” outside the Swasthya Bhavan.

The court restrained the authorities from “taking any coercive action” against Dasgupta in connection with the case without the court’s permission.

However, it said that the investigation would continue. “The investigation in the aforementioned case shall proceed without any impediment.”

Dasgupta had moved the high court seeking bail and quashing the proceedings against him.

“The petitioner is already in custody... and the police authorities have recorded his statements.... Therefore, this court is of the opinion that there is no requirement of any further custodial interrogation... Accordingly, the petitioner is directed to be released on bail upon furnishing a bond of ₹500 with one surety of like amount, to the satisfaction of the learned Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bidhannagar, North 24-Parganas,” said the order issued by Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj.

The case was registered at the Electronic Complex Police Station under the Bidhannagar commissionerate.

Another suspect, Sanjib Das, a resident of Haltu Garden Road in Kasba, was picked up on Friday. A senior police officer said the two persons heard in the clip were Das and Dasgupta.

Hearing Dasgupta’s plea on Tuesday, Justice Bharadwaj asked for an affidavit from the state government stating the legal grounds for his arrest.

In keeping with the directive, Bengal’s advocate-general, Kishore Datta, placed the affidavit before the court on Thursday.

Senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, who moved the petition on behalf of Dasgupta, submitted: “In the present case, the highest alleged offence is punishable with imprisonment for less than seven years. Therefore, the police could not have arrested the petitioner without issuing a notice under Section 35(3) of the Bharatiya
Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS)."

Datta, the state’s counsel, argued: “The arrest of the petitioner was lawful and in compliance with Section 35 of the BNSS, which empowers the authorities to arrest any person without the issuance of prior notice, irrespective of the fact that the alleged offence carries a punishment of less than seven years.”

He added: “The respondent authorities, acting upon credible intelligence received from their sources, were informed of a potential threat to public safety, specifically the possibility of a massacre during the demonstration by junior doctors in front of the Swasthya Bhavan.”

When Bhattacharyya said Dasgupta received a phone call from an “unknown number”, Datta countered that the call records pointed to “a total of 156 conversations between the two”.

“So, Sanjib was very much known to Kalatan. Both the accused have already admitted to having talked to each other over the phone,” he said.