Loudmouth Trinamool supporter Garga Chatterjee has finally been arrested in a two-year-old case lodged against him in Assam. Kolkata Police arrested him on the orders of the Gauhati High Court and presented him before a court. The court however granted him bail, ordering him to be present before the CJM court in Guwahati for a hearing of the case against him.
An FIR was registered against Garga Chatterjee in June 2020 in Dibrugarh in Assam accusing him of defaming the Ahom community. In a bid to attack BJP in Assam, Garga had called Sukapha, the founder of the Ahom dynasty that ruled in Assam for 600 years, a ‘Chinese invader’.
While two arrest warrants were issued against him by a court in Assam, West Bengal Police didn’t execute those warrants for two years. In June this year, Gauhati High Court slammed the West Govt and Police for this inaction and ordered to arrest him in six weeks. As a result, Kolkata Police arrested him. However, a court in Kolkata granted him bail, ordering him to be present at the Kamrup Metro Chief Judicial Magistrate court on September 17.
Following the Dibrugarh FIR in June 2020, Guwahati Police registered a case against Garga Chatterjee in October 2020 after he made comments defaming the Ahom community on Twitter, where he had questioned why then Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal regularly celebrates a ‘Chinese invader and his invading army’. He was referring to Chaolung Sukapha, who had established the Ahom kingdom in Assam in 1228 after coming from the Tai state Mong Mao in present-day Yunnan Province in China.
This had caused a massive uproar against him in Assam, especially among the Ahom community, and the FIR was filed against the following complaints. CM Sarbananda Sonowal also directed the police to arrest him for the objectionable comments. Facing arrest, Garga Chatterjee issued an unconditional apology to the Ahom community in August 2020. “I pray to the spirit of forgiveness of the people of Assam and honourable Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, please accept my unconditional apology,” he had said.
However, the Tai Ahom community and their organisations didn’t accept the apology and continued to pursue the case seeking his arrest. The court had issued non-bailable warrants against him, directing police to produce him before the court. However, Assam police could not arrest him as the West Bengal police were not cooperating with them. The CJM court had issued directions to the Kolkata police to arrest Garga Chatterjee, but the police in West Bengal chose to ignore these orders.
In June this year, while submitting a status report of the case to the Gauhati High Court, Assam police said that they could not arrest him and produce before the court due to non-cooperation from West Bengal police. The state government’s counsel told the court that two separate non-bailable arrest warrants against Chatterjee, issued by the SDJM court, could not be executed due to lack of assistance from the West Bengal Police.
As a result, the Gauhati High Court issued notices to the Chief Secretary of West Bengal and the Commissioner of Police, Kolkata on June 15, giving them six weeks to respond. The court had also slammed the Bengal police for not cooperating in executing the court-issued summons.
