The Mumbai Police on Monday told a court it has emailed notices to two Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) professors as part of a probe into suspicious messages sent to a 32-year-old former student, arrested for allegedly attending an event on campus wit The Mumbai Police on Monday told a court it has emailed notices to two Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) professors as part of a probe into suspicious messages sent to a 32-year-old former...
The Mumbai Police on Monday told a court it has emailed notices to two Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) professors as part of a probe into “suspicious” messages sent to a 32-year-old former student, arrested for allegedly attending an event on campus without permission in October 2025, linked to the death anniversary of former Delhi University professor G N Saibaba.
Additional chief judicial magistrate D S Khedekar gave police custody of the former masters student for a day. He was arrested on August 7, hours after a sessions court rejected his and another student’s anticipatory bail plea, holding that prima facie they had downloaded books written by members of banned organisation CPI (Maoist) and had raised slogans for the release of former JNU students Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, behind bars since 2020 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Seven others, students at the institute when the FIR was filed in 2025, were granted pre-arrest bail.
Police also said the institute’s professors had sent the accused for “fieldwork” to locations including Palghar, Nerul and Trombay, for an understanding of the political, social and economic conditions and issues faced by citizens there, with detailed reports emailed to the institute. They want to verify these visits with the accused.
Special public prosecutor Shishir Hirey, seeking three-day custody, said police want to probe if any of the teachers had advised the accused. Hirey also said police are probing a group chat on Signal app that was deleted after the FIR was filed in 2025.
“We need to probe why this was done. Content is also found where the accused is opposing the nuclear policy of India. A probe is needed if there was any attempt to cause any undermine India’s economic power, its establishments,” Hirey said.
Lawyers Vijay Hiremath and Rishika Agarwal said the fieldwork mentioned in the remand plea is part of the institute’s course and is mandatory, and that a report is uploaded on the institute’s website after every visit. They said the FIR was filed in October 2025 but 10 months later, police have not shown progress to prove any of the allegations. Hiremath also said Signal app is not banned and police did not show if they had written to the company seeking retrieval of the deleted chats in the past 10 months.
“He (the accused) had attended the crime branch office 10 times in 2025 before an anticipatory bail was filed. He was allowed to go but is arrested now. Student protests are going on, they want to send a message through this arrest,” Hiremath told court.
Hirey objected, saying police have been opposing the anticipatory bail for 10 months, when there were no protests.
Calls to the TISS administration did not receive a response.
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