Jharkhand teacher arrested for 2017 FB post about beef

A government college teacher has been arrested here for allegedly writing an "objectionable post" on Facebook two years ago in support of a beef party in Chennai, police said on Sunday.

Jeetrai Hansda, a contractual faculty member in the Jamshedpur Co-operative College, was apprehended from a village in Sakchi area of Jamshedpur on Saturday night, an officer said, adding that the teacher had been evading arrest.

"Hansda has been booked under various sections of the IPC and the IT Act, and the process to forward him to judicial custody is currently underway," Rajeev Singh, the officer-in-charge of Sakchi police station, told PTI.

The teacher, a resident of Parsudih here, had allegedly written a post in support of a beef party organised by the IIT-Madras students, prompting the Akhil Bharatiya Vishwa Parishad (ABVP), the student's wing of the RSS, to file a complaint against him, the officer said.

The beef fest was organized at IIT-Madras in 2017 in protest against the restrictions imposed on cattle trade by the Union government.

The student's union had demanded the sacking of Hansda. The post was then deleted, the officer added.

Asked for a reaction, Kolhan University vice-chancellor Shukla Mohanty said Hansda was a guest faculty member of the Graduate School College for Women when he posted the message on Facebook. He was later absorbed as a contractual teacher in the women's college.

"A show-cause notice was served to Hansda after receiving a complaint about his objectionable Facebook post, He then apologised," Mohanty said, adding that Hansda had joined as a contractual faculty member in the Co-operative College recently.