Kolkata : The Calcutta High Court Wednesday set aside its earlier order that directed the CBI to probe a murder in West Bengal’s Birbhum district in which a Trinamool Congress leader was allegedly involved.
Hearing an appeal filed by the Mamata Banerjee government, the division bench of Justice Jayanta Biswas and Justice I.C. Das set aside the order of the single-judge bench of Justice Harish Tandon, observing that there was no reason for further probe into the murder of Sagar Ghosh in Panrui in July last year.
Ghosh, an independent panchayat member, was killed in 2013, days after Trinamool president in Birbhum, Anubrata Mondal, allegedly gave an inflammatory speech inciting party workers to resort to violence against independent candidates and hurl bombs at police if they were prevented.
Mandal, along with 40 others, was named in a police complaint filed by the victim’s family.
Rejecting Justice Tandon’s findings that the probe by state agencies was “tainted with extraneous interference”, the division bench said a “mere hunch cannot be the basis of any decision”.
The bench said there was no deficiency in the investigation by the special investigation team (SIT) headed by the state police chief, and directed it to continue its probe in the matter.
The victim’s family, which had moved the high court seeking a CBI probe, said it will approach the Supreme Court.