The first demonstrations are to be staged outside the Indian embassies in Prague, Vienna and Ottawa next Thursday, on October 18, Maly added.Petr Svacha 51, from the Czech Academy of Sciences' Entomological Institute, and Kucera, 52, were detained in June near the Singalia National Park, some Warning from Japan's New Delhi embassy ...
Kashmir firefight kills Indian and Pakistani troops ...
Czech scientists still in Indian prison for collecting beetles ... 90 kilometers away from Darjeeling.
They allegedly kept more than 200 specimens of rare beetles and butterfly larvae for commercial purposes, but they did not have an official authorisation to collect them.While Svacha was acquitted of the charges, Kucera was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday.The men have dismissed the accusations since the beginning, saying they did not enter the Singalia park at all.The world scientific community has backed up both Czechs.The entomologists have sent a petition for their colleagues' release, signed by thousands of people, to Indian PM Manmohan Singh.Czech Academy of Sciences president Vaclav Paces has also intervened in their favour.Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg on Monday asked Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma for help during the latter's visit to Prague.Maly wrote in a letter sent to many countries on all continents that the trial of Svacha and Kucera was based on lies, frauds and falsified documents.The scientists, for example, said their alleged confession was added to blank sheets of paper that the police forced them to sign under a false pretext.Maly pointed out that the material Svacha and Kucera collected in India did not contain any rare species and had no commercial value, according to an expert opinion by the Zoological Institute in Calcutta that was assessing the case.Both men were only "taken hostage" by West Bengali officials who are trying to separate their province from the rest of India, Maly said."It is just a political game in the area where a civic war can erupt any time," he added.
(Ceske Noviny)
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