New Delhi, July 5: Over 600 scientists around the world have signed a petition seeking the release of Czech entomologist Petr Svacha, arrested in Bengal two weeks ago for illegally collecting beetles, moths and butterflies, Indian entomologists said today.

A text of the petition, signed online by the researchers who specialise in invertebrates, has been sent to the Prime Minister, the Bengal chief minister and Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, said the scientists who organised the petition in India.

Forest officials arrested Svacha, 51, and another Czech national, Emil Kucera, 52, on June 22 when they caught them with some 200 beetles and other insects, collected from the Singalila National Park, about 90km from Darjeeling. Indian laws ban the collection of large numbers of insects from protected areas.

Svacha and Kucera are expected to be produced in court on Monday when a second bail plea will be moved. They are in judicial remand at the Darjeeling Correctional Home.

Svacha, a senior scientist at the institute of entomology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, has impeccable credentials as a world-renowned authority on beetle larvae, the petition said.

“We are convinced Dr Svacha was motivated purely by his work and was collecting beetles for no other reason than for research,” the petition said. “He probably did not realise that he had entered a protected area.”

“The insects they study do not have commercial value. They include major forestry pests, and Dr Svacha’s publications are of great use to forestry authorities all over the world,” Max Barclay, a curator at the Natural History Museum, London, said in an email sent to Indian scientists.

The scientists have asked authorities to consider Svacha’s age and frail condition and release him. The petition does not mention the other arrested Czech.

“We do not know about significant scientific research publications by the other gentleman yet,” said Priyadarsanan Dharmarajan, a scientist at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore.