Compared to convicted terrorist Aftab Ansari by the West Bengal government in an open court, Jadavpur University alumnus and researcher Hindol Majumdar, who has been accused of masterminding an attack on a state minister's convoy, said he expected no better analogy from an establishment which is "intolerant" to any form of criticism.
Speaking to PTI a day after he was granted bail by the Alipore court and allowed to return to Spain after two weeks to continue his research in biomedicine, Majumdar said blunt comparisons like the one made against him have replaced nuanced arguments in public domains where tendencies are increasing to brand adversaries as ‘anti-national’ entities.
Majumdar, accused of plotting an attack on West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu's convoy on the varsity campus in March, was granted bail on Monday, five days after his arrest at Delhi airport following his return from Europe.
“When I learnt that the government lawyer compared me to a convicted terrorist, I was startled at first. I simply couldn’t believe it,” Majumdar said.
“Later, I pondered over it and realised that I expect no better from the establishment. That’s because the dominating sentiment in society these days is that if someone is critiquing you, it is held that the person is out there to get you. But it is not so,” the researcher said.
Majumdar received the prestigious Marie Curie scholarship to pursue higher studies at a Spanish university.
Ansari, with whom the JU alumnus was compared in court by the chief public prosecutor of Kolkata Police on grounds of "circumstantial similarity" in plotting a crime, is the convicted mastermind of the 2002 American Center attack in Kolkata and was awarded a death sentence.
Majumdar reasoned that his critiques of the government were aimed at pushing the administration to perform better than what it was doing currently.
“All I try to say is that the government has all the resources at its disposal; it is at the top of the food chain. It can do much better in terms of improving the lives of people than it is currently doing. But it failed to accept dissent,” he said.
The 31-year-old former JU student of Pharmaceutical Engineering stated that his research focused on early detection mechanisms of autoimmune disorders affecting human kidney and how to use AI and machine learning tools to predict prognosis of kidney diseases.
“Only when you love your country deeply, you want it to change for the better,” said Majumdar.
He also added, “Unfortunately, there has been a paradigm shift in the way, even India’s popular culture, films like Rang De Basanti, Swades and Chak De India, pointed at the prevailing ills in the system while simultaneously taking pride in nationhood. This has now reduced to only singing praises for the powers that be.” Majumdar said he still found it difficult to accept that the police would have a Lookout Circular Notice, based on which he was apprehended at the immigration desk at Delhi airport, issued against him, like they do for absconding criminals.
“Why did they have to issue a lookout notice against me? Was I absconding? They could have simply sent me an email and asked the questions. Or, they could have called me and asked me to appear for questioning. I told this to my interrogators at the Jadavpur police lock-up as well,” the researcher said.
The academic, however, said he had no qualms against the police, in Delhi and Kolkata, since almost all of the men in uniform he came across displayed a high degree of professionalism.
“Following my arrest, all that the police did was their job. I was almost never at the receiving end of any kind of custodial misconduct,” he stated.
Majumdar, though, revealed that his experience in custody allowed him to explore first hand “another India” which he thought he would never have the opportunity to know except from books.
“At the lock-up in Delhi, I met a man arrested for conducting Dunki trips (using illegal immigration routes for border crossover) to Pakistan. Also met migrant workers deported from Qatar and the UAE. In Kolkata, I was put up with men accused of conducting both serious and petty crimes. Almost all came from impoverished backgrounds. The world I saw was a world where crime has been normalised. The experience was priceless,” he shared.
Majumdar expressed his apprehension about maintaining the timeline of his doctoral thesis, which he intends to wrap up by 2027.
“Although I have the leave of the court to return to Spain, I am not sure when I will get back my phone and work laptop which the police have seized. My laptop contains important documents related to my work,” he said.
And what about his lookout notice? Has that now been removed? “I am not sure about the status of that as well,” Majumdar regretted.
Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.