Facebook posts against Trinamool Congress land BJYM, RSS activists in jail

Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
Kolkata, May 11

The BJP on Saturday alleged that the Mamata Banerjee-led government in West Bengal was cracking down on its activists for harmless posts on social media.

Talking to the Tribune, Debjit Sarkar, West Bengal unit Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) president and BJP candidate from Serampore Lok Sabha constituency, said, “Priyanka Sharma, a young BJYM functionary from Howrah and Amanish Iyer, an RSS office-bearer, have been arrested by police and sent to judicial custody for 14 days each for what they posted on their respective Facebook pages.

Priyanka Sharma, a BJP youth wing leader in Howrah, was arrested yesterday for posting a morphed image of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on her Facebook page.

The image, which cannot be seen on Priyanka’s timeline anymore, showed Mamata Banerjee’s face superimposed over Priyanka Chopra’s recent Met Gala attire. 

A complaint was filed against Sharma by Trinamool Congress leader Vibhas Hazra. 

Accusing Priyanka Sharma of posting the “most awful post on Facebook on May 9, 2019 at 5 pm on her timeline,” the complaint said, “She cut the face of Mamata Banerjee (Chief Minister of Bengal) from a picture and pasted it on a picture of some model. Something which broke the community guideline and it is also an issue of violence.”

“She not just tries to insult our Hon’ble Chief Minister, but she is trying to insult the culture of our Bengal by her post on Facebook and is cyber crime,” added the complainant. 

Amanish Iyer, according to Debjit Sarkar, had posted on his Facebook page some photographs of the Serampore Trinamool Congress candidate Kalyan Banerjee with some women.

“Iyer has been booked under charges related to obscenity even though there is nothing obscene about these photographs,” Sarkar said.  

The Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation in West Bengal has had a reputation of being intolerant to anything critical about the Chief Minister on social media. A Jadavpur University professor was arrested sometime back for circulating a cartoon lampooning the Chief Minister. 

Last year, a man from Tripura was arrested for allegedly making derogatory remarks against the West bengal CM on social media. 

The arrest of Sharma and Iyer has given a fresh boost to the debate over the intolerance of the Mamata government, which has always accused the BJP government at the Centre of being intolerant.