Nine supporters and activists of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation from West Bengal’s Jhargram district on Friday, February 4, for the murder of BJP worker Tarak Sau. They were detained for questioning and then taken to court.
Among the detainees is former deputy chief of Netura village Swapan Pariya, a Trinamool booth president Shailen Giri, and residents of Aguibani village Vijay Patar and Utpal Naik. Other names linked with this crime are the wife of deceased Trinamool activist Durga Saran, his brother Peon Saran, Vikram Saran and Peon’s wife Soujmani Saran.
The murder took place on March 21 last year, during a clash between TMC and the BJP and Trinamool activists in Netura village. During the initial investigation, the police detained some BJP workers. Injured BJP activist Tarak Sau was moved to Odisha (it is not clear if TMC administration denied him treatment in WB or Tarak’s family felt safer treating him out of state) but he passed away on March 25.
Later the investigation was taken over by the CBI which led to the arrest of these nine people. The two women detainees are from Aguibani village. In August 2021, after first giving a clean chit to the TMC regime, sheer weight of evidence forced a five-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court to finally order a CBI to probe into all the serious WB post-poll cases like murder and rape based on hundreds of complaints that the ruling party had rubbished as ‘biased and concocted’. The CBI had formed multiple teams for the investigations; each comprising superintendents from Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and other states and deputy inspector generals and headed by a joint director. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been providing security for these officials.
“The CBI is investigating and the correct information will come up in the court,” said former BJP district president Sukhmoy Satpati.
The CBI has also announced a cash award of ₹50,000 each for any leads on two women wanted for the murder of Shova Majumdar, the 85-year-old mother of BJP worker Gopal Majumdar and late resident of Nimta in North 24 Parganas district. The octogenarian and her son were assaulted after midnight at their home in February last year by TMC workers, in the run up to the WB assembly elections. The senior citizen’s swollen up face had gone viral at the time, shocking citizens across the nation at the brutality of the TMC regime.
Shova ji succumbed to her injuries a month later, on March 29.
In other news, WB Law minister Moloy Ghatak has also been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for interrogation in the coal smuggling case.
However, state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has suggested during an administrative meeting that the central agencies have turned ‘proactive’ considering the upcoming polls at 108 civic bodies in February. She was also upset at the CBI for summoning the notorious murder-accused TMC strongman Anubrata Mondal, Birbhum district president and a leader close to the TMC matriarch, in a post-poll violence case.
Mondal has suddenly taken ill and moved the Calcutta high court citing medical issues and was granted relief from arrest on Thursday. Justice Rajasekhar Mantha surprisingly held that the CBI could take no strict action against the TMC leader without the court’s consent, while also directing him to appear before the investigative agency for interrogation.
