Dilip Singh at home on Friday. Picture by Biplab Basak

Siliguri, June 6: Dilip Singh, who had protested when minister Asok Bhattacharya was about to abandon the bandh-stuck Darjeeling Mail and slip away to Siliguri in a car yesterday, has been charged with wrongful confinement, verbal abuse and unlawful assembly.

Charges, that for most passengers of the train, should have been brought against the CPM leadership.

“It’s ridiculous. The minister’s comrades had held the state to ransom, bullying and threatening anyone who stepped out to work,” said Manish Sinha of Matigara who was 33-year-old Singh’s co-passenger.

“The young man has been framed for standing up to a minister,” Sinha added.

Bhattacharya, however, has tried to steer clear of the row triggered by his desire to finish “important work” on a bandh day.

Yesterday, the minister said he had been “intimidated, threatened and abused”, but Singh was arrested on the basis of charges brought against him by a journalist.

“There is no doubt that the man abused and threatened me despite my promise that I wouldn’t leave the train,” Bhattacharya said today. “But though he misbehaved with me, I’ve not filed a complaint against him.”

Singh, a sales representa-tive for a cosmetics company, said: “I neither threatened nor abused the minister or any journalist. All that I did was to protest when I saw the minister leaving, as there were chances of the train moving sooner if he was on board.”

He has been flooded with congratulatory calls and “thank you” messages since being released on bail last night.

“I’m overwhelmed,” the Jalpaiguri resident said. “An old woman blessed me, saying she had seen a common man protesting against a minister after many years. But I don’t think I have done anything exceptional.”

Legal experts said the charges brought against Singh were likely to be trashed in court. The question of “unlawful assembly” does not arise as no prohibitory orders had been clamped at Kishanganj station, where the train was held up, a lawyer said.

“A station is a public place. A train had been detained there for many hours and many of the passengers had got off,” said Jalpaiguri advocate Goutam Pal. “The person against whom the charge has been brought was a passenger and had every right to be there.”

Pal also rubbished the “wrongful-confinement” charge, saying it was not possible for a single person to forcefully confine anyone in an open space during the day. “How can a court ever believe it?”

In the case of the last charge — verbal abuse — both Pal and another Jalpaiguri lawyer, Goutam Das, said the police had to prove in court that Singh had indeed hurled abuses.