The Mumbai Police told a court that it has emailed notices to two professors at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences for sending allegedly suspicious messages to a former student who was arrested on Friday, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

Abhirup Paul was arrested for allegedly shouting slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.

Khalid and Imam have been in jail for more than five years under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their alleged role in a conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots. The trial in the case has not yet begun, and their petitions for regular bail have been repeatedly rejected.

Paul and another fellow student of the institute were also booked for possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution alleged reflected Maoist ideology.

Paul had been arrested hours after a Mumbai court denied them anticipatory bail on Friday. Seven other students who had been booked after taking part in an event in October commemorating the death anniversary of former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba were granted anticipatory bail.

Saibaba, who had more than 90% disability and used a wheelchair, spent over seven years in jail on accusations of having links with Maoists. In March 2024, he was acquitted by the Bombay High Court and released. Seven months later, in October 2024, he died of post-operative complications in Hyderabad.

On Monday, the police sought a three-day extension of Paul’s custody, saying that they wanted to investigate whether any of the professors had advised him, The Indian Express reported. The court granted police custody for one day.

In its remand application, the police said notices had been served on the personal and TISS email IDs of the two professors, who had allegedly sent “suspicious WhatsApp messages” to Paul. The police said they wanted to confront Paul with the professors and investigate him in their presence.

The police also said that professors at the institute had sent Paul on fieldwork to Palghar, Nerul and Trombay to study the political, social and economic conditions of the residents. Paul had submitted detailed reports on the visits to the institute by email, which the police said they wanted to verify with him.

The police were also examining a Signal group chat that was deleted after the first information report was registered last year, The Indian Express quoted the special public prosecutor as saying. The prosecutor said the police wanted to determine why the chat was deleted.

The investigation would also examine whether there had been any attempt to “undermine India’s economic power, its establishments”, the prosecutor was quoted as saying.

Lawyers appearing for Paul said the field visits cited in the remand application were a compulsory part of the institute’s curriculum, The Indian Express reported. They said reports from each visit were uploaded to the institute’s website.

They also argued that although the FIR was registered in October, the police had made little progress in establishing the allegations even after 10 months.

On the deleted Signal chats, the lawyers said the messaging app was not banned in India and that the police had not approached the company to seek recovery of the deleted chats since October.

In October, some students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences gathered on campus to light candles and display posters of Saibaba to commemorate his death anniversary.

The police filed a case against the students who attended the event based on a complaint by the institute’s administration. The first information report invoked charges including causing prejudice to the nation, promoting enmity between groups and participating in an unlawful assembly.

While granting anticipatory bail to seven students but denying it to Paul and another student, the court said that paying homage to Saibaba was not unlawful. However, it said allegations that the students had shouted slogans in support of Khalid and Imam, along with material recovered from their electronic devices, weighed against granting them anticipatory bail.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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