IIT-Guwahati prof quizzed for third time over anti-CAA stir

IIT Guwahati professor Arupjyoti Saikia was questioned for the third day by the National Investigation Agency in connection with a case against farmers' rights activist Akhilesh Gogoi and his aides, who have spent over a month in prison on charges of helping Maoists set up a base in Assam under the cover of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Guwahati (Assam): The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday interrogated IIT-Guwahati Professor Arupjyoti Saikia for the third time in four days in connection with the violence in the city over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December last year.

Saikia, a professor of History at the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati, has been summoned again to the NIA office at Sonapur in the outskirts of the city for questioning on February 7.

"Today (Tuesday), he (Saikia) was questioned for about five hours. He is still being questioned as a witness to Akhil Gogoi's case. He has been asked to appear again on Friday," Saikia's advocate Santanu Borthakur told a news agency.

Saikia was first questioned on Saturday and then on Monday.

The NIA has already arrested around half a dozen senior leaders, including Akhil Gogoi, of peasant body Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) and its sister organisations for their alleged role in massive violence during the anti-CAA protests across the state in December last year.

Earlier in December, Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said that the state government has evidence that a leading academician working at a central educational institute was monitoring the "entire exercise" of violence on December 11 and 12 in protest against the Act.

"That Assamese academician gave three statements -- a revolution has started, all you senior leaders disappear and now enter through the Janata Bhavan (Secretariat) gate," Sarma had said at a press conference on December 17.

Based on the evidence, it was found that the academician was giving instructions from a control room, he had said.

Earlier, 42 eminent scholars, including Ramachandra Guha, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Partha Chatterjee, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Nivedita Menon, had expressed concerns over the issue and the "ordeal" that Saikia is going through.

Saikia has done extensive research on the history and nature of Brahmaputra and has penned several books on the mighty river.

(PTI)