This Article is From Sep 17, 2018

Top Court Seeks Report On Probe Into BJP Worker's Death In West Bengal

A bench of Justices UU Lalit and Ashok Bhushan said it will go into the locus of petitioner advocate Gaurav Bhatia only after the state government's reply comes, after the state government said such petitions should not be encouraged by the court.

Top Court Seeks Report On Probe Into BJP Worker's Death In West Bengal

The court had issued notice to West Bengal and CBI and sought replies in four weeks.

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the West Bengal government to file a report in two weeks on the investigation into the alleged killing of three BJP workers in the state after the recent local body polls.

A bench of Justices UU Lalit and Ashok Bhushan said it will go into the locus of petitioner advocate Gaurav Bhatia only after the state government's reply comes, after the state government said such petitions should not be encouraged by the court.

Maintaining that several people have been arrested with regard to the alleged murders, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for West Bengal government, said it was wrong to say that the police was not doing anything.

"At the time when the petition was filed, several people were arrested with regard to those crimes. We will file a detailed reply with respect to the investigation done in a sealed cover," he said.

The bench said it needed only a brief outline of what is being done in these cases.

Gaurav Bhatia, who is also a BJP leader, said that after the notice was issued on his petition, the police started acting and told the media that people were being arrested.

The bench posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks.

The top court had on August 24 agreed to examine the plea seeking a CBI probe into the alleged killing of three BJP workers in West Bengal. The plea filed by Mr Bhatia alleged that the family members of the victims were being threatened.

The court had issued notice to West Bengal and the CBI on the plea and sought their replies in four weeks.

Mr Bhatia had sought a CBI probe and alleged that the family members of the three slain BJP workers, Shaktipada Sarkar, Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar, were being threatened. He had also demanded that compensation to the tune of Rs 50 lakh and security cover to the family members of the victims.

The BJP workers were killed in Purulia and South 24 Pargana districts of West Bengal after the recently held panchayat polls.

Shaktipada Sarkar, a BJP block president in the Mandirbazar-Dhanurhat area, was hacked to death when he was returning home in the South 24 Parganas district on July 28, while the body of Dulal Kumar, 32, a BJP worker, was found hanging from an electric pole in the Purulia's Balarampur area on June 2.

In the same district on May 30, the body of 18-year-old, Tirlochan Mahato, also a BJP worker from Balarampur, was found hanging from a tree with a poster written in Bengali struck on his back, saying he was killed for canvassing for the BJP in the panchayat election.

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