Mamata demands removal of ‘offensive’ content from Facebook

It is becoming increasingly clear that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has a very thin skin – or an empress-sized ego without the concomitant statesmanship, depending on one's point of view.

Despite the outraged uproar caused by the controversial 'cartoon case', Banerjee has apparently asked the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to demand from Facebook the removal of four portrayals of her which she finds offensive.

The CID on Monday wrote to the social networking site asking it to remove four the portraits lampooning Banerjee. It has also sought the IP address of the computer from which the pictures were first uploaded onto Facebook.

Last week, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested, allegedly roughed up, and jailed overnight in a case where he should have got immediate bail (See: Twitterati slams Mamata for arrest over cartoons).

This sparked a wave of lampoons and internet protests, under titles like arrestme.com. All political parties except Banerjee's Trinamool Congress reacted with outrage, calling Banerjee a ''fascist'' and so forth. There were widespread public protests even in her own state against her intolerance to criticism.

Mahapatra's neighbour Subrata Sengupta was arrested along with Mahapatra for the same 'crime'. Both have been released; but on bail. Apart from other things, they were charged under the Indian Penal Code for 'eve-teasing', defamation, and humiliating a woman.