The Calcutta high court on Monday questioned the role of the police officer who initially investigated the alleged murder of two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers in East Midnapore district on July 12, lawyers who attended the hearing said.
“The division bench of justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi had earlier ordered the state to collect phone call records of the suspects named in the FIR and people involved in the investigation. After going through the preliminary call records submitted on Monday, the bench asked why the doctor who conducted the first post mortem examination was called up by the investigating officer (IO) several times before and after the autopsy,” a lawyer said, requesting anonymity.
The BJP workers — Sudhir Chandra Paik (65) and Sujit Das (23) — died at a village dance competition organised on Muharram in East Midnapore’s Khejuri. While the local police said after the postmortem that the two accidentally died of electrocution, their families and the district BJP unit levelled charges of communal motives.
“Why should the IO call the postmortem doctor so many times?” the court asked.
Representing the police, advocate general Kishore Dutta told the bench that the IO did not call up the doctor for any special reason and neither of them could be suspected.
“On hearing this argument, the bench asked Dutta if he had any proof to back his claim,” the lawyer said.
The bench set the matter for hearing on September 15 after the state asked for more time to furnish a detailed report on the call records.
On August 26, the single bench of justice Tirthankar Ghosh directed the Criminal Investigation Department of the West Bengal police to probe the case after turning down a petition by the two affected families demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Leader of the opposition in the state legislative assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, alleged foul play after the deaths, and the families moved the high court in July demanding a second postmortem examination.
Since a single bench did not accept the petition, the families moved the division bench of justices Debangshu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi. The division bench ordered a second autopsy under the supervision of three senior doctors from the state-run SSKM hospital and said the report should be filed before the single bench of Justice Ghosh.
“The reports of the first and second post-mortems are not totally tallying,” Justice Ghosh observed during a hearing on August 25, adding that the discrepancies made fair judgement impossible.
