Calcutta High Court on Friday issued an interim stay on summonses served on former Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty in connection with five criminal cases lodged against him with Santiniketan police.
Chakrabarty, whose term ended earlier this week, had moved the court as he apprehended that the police would arrest him in connection with the five cases. A day after he completed his five-year term as vice-chancellor, Santiniketan police station on Thursday served summonses on Chakrabarty, including one that was recently lodged by the Santiniketan Trust over the installation of plaques that do not have the name of varsity founder Rabindranath Tagore.
While staying the operation of the five summonses, a vacation bench of Justice Jay Sengupta said the police would be able to issue fresh notices to Chakrabarty and could interrogate him in connection with three cases on November 20 and the remaining two cases on November 22 at his residence. The order did not specify the residential place.
“The cops will not take coercive action like arrest till the next date of hearing, which has been fixed on November 29,” said a court official.
A source said the court had initially planned to hear the case on Monday, but it got listed as a special case after Chakrabarty’s counsel claimed that his client was apprehending arrest if his plea was not heard immediately.
A police officer said they would act according to the court order and question the former VC on the date fixed by the court.
At least a dozen criminal cases were lodged by several people of Santiniketan, including students and teachers, against Chakrabarty during his tenure as Visva-Bharati VC.
A source said Chakrabarty’s lawyer told the court that since his client had assumed office five years ago, there had been a tussle with the state administration. The lawyer is said to have claimed that the cases were “false”.
Chakrabarty’s tenure was marked by controversy. “The list of wrongdoings of Bidyut Chakrabarty is unending. He did not even spare Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who had to move court for legal remedy. The latest was the blunder of not including the name of Rabindranath Tagore in plaques to commemorate Unesco’s World Heritage site tag for Santiniketan,” a varsity professor said.
The varsity’s aggrieved section is now hopeful that interim VC Sanjoy Kumar Mallik will take measures to restore Santiniketan’s culture and tradition that Chakrabarty had allegedly “hurt”. Mallik held a meeting with a group of punished and aggrieved students at his office on Friday and ensured that he would look into their grievances.