Face of teacher protest detained prior to march

Police today detained a leader of unemployed teachers’ protests just hours before a planned march on the School Service Commission (SSC) headquarters in Kolkata on Monday morning, intensifying tensions around a long-running recruitment scandal that has rocked the state’s education system.

A team from the Chandannagar Police Commissionerate detained Suman Biswas, one of the organisers of the demonstration, at Adisaptagram railway station in Hooghly district. The police had earlier searched his family home in Bandel. Biswas was not present at the time.
Biswas’s detention comes a day after the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate released an audio clip in which voices attributed to unemployed teachers discussed plans to hurl crude bombs, set property on fire and attack police during the SSC protest.

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Family members described his detention as sudden and arbitrary. “We just learnt that my brother was taken away from Adisaptagram station while he was on his way to join the protest. He wasn’t even allowed to say a word. Police have not told us where he is being held,” his brother Sanjay Biswas told local reporters. “Is it a crime that he got his teaching job in 2016? If government employees themselves are humiliated like this, where do we go for justice?” he asked.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Bidhannagar), Anish Sarkar, told reporters that the six-minute recording was “clear evidence” of a conspiracy to turn the demonstration violent. He also confirmed that Biswas had earlier sought police permission for the march via email, which was denied. “A case has been registered,” Sarkar said.
The authenticity of the clip has not been independently verified, and it remains unclear how it was obtained. On Sunday, Biswas had strongly denied the allegations, accusing the state government of trying to sabotage the protest movement. “We are not in favour of violence. The government is deliberately trying to malign us so that the agitation loses public sympathy,” he said.
The protest was called by the ‘Chakrihara Jogyota Shikshak Mancha’ (Forum of Unemployed Qualified Teachers), which represents thousands of aspirants who cleared state recruitment examinations for school teachers as far back as 2016 but were allegedly denied appointments due to irregularities.