Kolkata, April 10
Four days after the attack on the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths at Bhupatinagar in East Midnapore district, the West Bengal Police have not arrested anyone so far.
Opposition parties have started accusing the state police of adopting the Sandeshkhali line in going slow about the arrests. In the case of Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district, the now-suspended Trinamool Congress leader and the mastermind of the January 5 attack on the ED and CAPF personnel Sheikh Shahjahan managed to remain absconding for 55 days.
Questions are being raised at the police after they failed to make a single arrest on the FIR registered by NIA, the same cops, however, are quite active on the counter-FIR filed against the NIA sleuths.
The counter-FIR has been filed against NIA by the family members of Monobrata Jana, one of the two Trinamool Congress leaders arrested by NIA on October 6 morning. The attack took place while the NIA sleuths were returning from Bhupatinagar after arresting Jana and his associate Balai Charan Maity.
The state police have already sent notices to two NIA officials to join the investigation in connection with the attack on their men. Both have been asked to be present at Bhupatinagar Police Station on April 11. One of the two officials is a complainant in the case of the attack on NIA sleuths and the other is the one who suffered minor injuries.
The officer who suffered minor injuries has also been asked to bring the medical report concerned along with him. Even the NIA sleuths have been asked to bring that vehicle to Bhupatinagar police station which was damaged during the attack.
Rabindra Nath Maity, one of the BJP legislators from East Midnapore district claimed that the police in the case of the Bhupatinagar incident are exactly following the same line as it was done in the case of Sheikh Shahjahan after the Sandeshkhali attack on ED sleuths. “Those responsible for the attack on the NIA sleuths at Bhupatinagar are actually under the safe shelter of the police," he alleged.
State Congress president and the party Lok Sabha member, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury alleged the "district police do not have any moral guts to arrest the accused since all of them are close associates of the ruling Trinamool Congress".