CBI to probe death of Trinamool leader whose killing sparked Birbhum violence

The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the murder of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh, news agency PTI reported. Bhadu Sheikh’s death triggered apparent retaliatory killings last month – nine people were burned alive after their homes were set on fire – in Bengal’s Birbhum district. The high court had earlier also ordered a CBI probe into those nine deaths, which included women and children.

Prayers to transfer the case to the CBI were made before a division bench of the high court presided over by Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava. It was argued that the two incidents – the killing of Bhadu Sheikh and the torching of houses in Bogtui village, in which nine died – were interlinked.

The Bengal DGP has said the Bogtui violence took place within an hour of the murder of Sheikh, who was the deputy chief of the local panchayat.

On March 25, four days after violence erupted, the same bench ordered that inquiries into the death of nine people be handed over from a Bengal government-appointed team to the CBI.

On Thursday the CBI team investigating the Bogtui killings arrested four people from Mumbai.

Those were the first arrests made by the central agency in this case.

All four hail from Bengal and were tracked with information passed on to the CBI’s Mumbai unit which apprehended them, an agency officer in Kolkata said. The locations of the suspects’ mobile phones were traced to near Bogtui village on the day of the incident, the officer added.

Those arrested were identified as Bappa Sheikh, Sabu Sheikh, Taj Mohammad and Serajul Sheikh – all residents of Bogtui village.

Eight people, including two children, were charred to death when eight huts were set ablaze in Bogtui village late on March 21, in a suspected fallout of the murder of a ruling Trinamool Congress panchayat official Bhadu Sheikh. A ninth person died while being treated in hospital.

The state on March 22 formed a SIT to probe the case. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited the affected village on March 24 and ordered the arrest of all suspects, including her party colleagues.

With input from PTI