Death in Police Custody

We have watched with disgust and horror the brutal police assault on students during a peaceful demonstration organised by four Left students’ organisations on 2 April 2013 in Kolkata and the subsequent death of Sudipta Gupta, a participant in the demonstration, while in police custody. Sudipta was a bright student and a leading activist of the Students Federation of India. We are shocked to see the chief minister of the state absolve the police of any responsibility for Sudipta’s death even before a proper enquiry had been initiated. We do not perceive this incident as an isolated one but rather as the egregious culmination of a series of systematic attacks on the civil and democratic rights of the academic community in West Bengal over recent months. We strongly condemn this unprovoked singular attack on a peaceful students’ demonstration and the subsequent custodial death of Sudipta Gupta. We demand an immediate and impartial enquiry into the incident.

Parthiba Basu, Gautam Gangopadhyay, Selvyn Jussy, Gautam Gupta, Indraneel Dasgupta, Binayak Dutta-Roy, Subimal Sen, Ratan Khasnobis, Dinesh Abrol, Indu Agnihotri, S Anandhi, G Arunima, Bijay Bal, Sudipta Bandyopadhyay, Arindam Banerjee, Taposik Banerjee, Sharmistha Banerjee, Sumit Kumar Baruya, Channa Basavaiah, Padmanava Basu, Saumyajit Bhattacharya, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Sudipta Bhattacharya, Abhijit Bhattacharya, Dwaipayan Bhattacharya, Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya, Kaushik Bhattacharya, Saswata Bhattacharya, Kamales Bhaumik, Parthasarathi Bhaumik, Kaberi Chakraborty, Satyabrata Chakraborty, Amitava Chakraborty, Mahalaya Chatterjee, Apurba Kumar Chattopadhyay, Suchetana Chattopadhyay, Arijit Chaudhuri, Shibani Chaudhury, Chirashree Dasgupta, Samantak Das, Kandarpa Das, Surajit Das, Jayati Das, Sumangala Damodaran, Malabika Das Gupta, Anindya Datta, Shantanu De Roy, Ranjeeta Dutta, Sanjukta Ganguly, Kuntal Ghosh, Aditi Ghosh, Aurnab Ghose, Asimananda Goswami, Biswajit Haldar, Arun Jana, Debnarayan Jana, Abdul Kafi, Guruprasad Kar, Dipak Kesh, Sushil Khanna, Ayesha Kidwai, Anirban Kundu, Abhijit Kundu, Pradip K Mahapatra, Shaswati Mazumdar, Surajit Mazumdar, Mritiunjoy Mohanty, Debi Prasad Mishra, Ishita Mukhopadhyay, Surajit Mukhopadhyay, Maitreyee Nandy, Amitava Pal, Debabrata Pal, Parthapratim Pal, Subrata Pal, Rajni Palriwala, Archana Prasad, M Rajivlochan, V K Ramachandran, Manas Ray, Rahul Roy, Jyoti Sabharwal, Himansu Charan Sadangi, Maitreyee Saha Sarkar, Pranab Sarkar, Sukhendu Sekhar Sarkar, Bhupen Sarmah, Sucharita Sen, Sharmistha Sen, Jayeeta Sharma, Anup Sinha, Rajyeswar Sinha, Janaky Sreedharan, Vamsi Vakulabharanam.