A five-judge bench of Calcutta High Court Thursday ordered a CBI investigation and a three-member SIT to probe the serious allegations of rape, murder, arson and loot that followed immediately after announcement of West Bengal Assembly polls on May 02 this year. The better part is that the investigations will be monitored by the court.
The HC orders may have serious ramifications for the Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee who has been all along resisting the public and judicial intervention in what had happened on those fateful days of lawlessness in W. Bengal and her party’s miscreants are accused.
The court also directed the Mamata Banerjee government to pay compensation to the victims of violence directly into their bank accounts after due verification within a time-bound period.
People across the nation and world-over saw the naked dance of violence on May 02 and following days as reported in the media. The social media was rather flooded with the agonising videos and pictures of the victims telling the tales of woes and atrocities.
Soon after the widespread post-poll violence across and failure of the law & order machinery in providing protection to citizens, the West Bengal Governor had to move out and paid visits to the affected areas and had first hand assessment of the situation. He reassured the victims of protection and justice and later reported the matter to the Centre. Thereafter, few central government teams also visited the areas followed by the BJP leadership.
With petitions filed in the immediate aftermath, the high court took cognisance and in June, the court asked the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to form a seven member committee “considering the fact that there was blatant violation of human rights besides violation of other rights of the victims”. The committee submitted its final report on July 13 recommending a CBI probe, and that trials should be held outside the state.
The committee said at least 1,934 complaints were lodged with the state police between May 2 and June 20. They included 29 complaints related to murder, 12 to rape and sexual assault, and 940 of loot and arson with the committee receiving around 1,979 reports covering 15,000 victims.
Reminding the state government of its prime responsibility to treat the people without distinction of political affiliations and protecting them, the High Court order quoted acting chief justice Bindal as saying: “In our opinion, the heinous crimes such as murder and rape deserve to be investigated by an independent agency which in circumstances can only be the Central Bureau of Investigation. It is for the reason that in a number of cases, the State had failed to register the FIRs and opined the same to not be cases of murder. In some cases, even after registration of FIR, the observation by the State is that these may result in ‘no case’. This shows a predetermined mind to take the investigation into a particular direction.” The court observed that there is no place of violence in this country and the Court being the protector of the constitution cannot be a mute spectator on such lawless violent incidents.
The order comes as a setback to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), with party MP Saugata Roy saying that the handing over of cases to CBI was a “transgression” on the rights of the state.
