Bengal moves Supreme Court, refuses to hand over Sandeshkhali probe to CBI

The West Bengal government moved the Supreme Court challenging the Calcutta High Court order to hand over to CBI the case of attack on ED officials at Sandeshkhali and the custody of suspended TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the investigation by registering an FIR on Tuesday, but the state police refused to hand over Sheikh to the CBI team.

"We have not handed him over to CBI as the state government has moved the Supreme Court," a CID official said.

In the Supreme Court, the matter was mentioned before a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta by senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for the West Bengal government. The bench refused an urgent listing of the plea and asked Singhvi to mention the matter before the Registrar General of the top court.

A team of ED officials was attacked by a nearly 1,000-strong mob on January 5 when they went to raid the house of Sheikh, who allegedly has close links with arrested former state food minister Jyoti Priya Mallick, in connection with the multi-crore ration distribution scam in West Bengal.

"There can be no better case than the case on hand which requires to be transferred to be investigated by CBI," a high court division bench headed by Chief Justice TS Sivagnanam had ruled.

Both the ED and the West Bengal government had moved separate appeals challenging a single bench's January 17 order to form a joint special investigation team (SIT) of the CBI and the state police to probe the mob attack on the ED officials.

While the ED wanted the probe to be transferred to the CBI only, the state prayed that the investigation be allowed to be done by the state police.

Sheikh, who is also the prime accused in alleged sexual atrocities on women and land grabbing at Sandeshkhali, was arrested by the state police on February 29 in the ED officials attack case.

The ED had contended before the court that the state police purposely arrested Sheikh in the case of the attack on ED officials, even though more than 40 other cases have been pending against him for years, to deny the CBI the custody of Sheikh if the case is handed over to the central agency.

The division bench had earlier stayed a single bench order constituting the SIT and restrained the West Bengal police from proceeding with the investigation in the cases registered by them in connection with the attack on ED officials.

The bench said that despite such an order, the case stood transferred to the state CID and they issued notices to the ED officials.

"Thus, this act of the state police would be sufficient to hold that the state police are totally biased and every attempt is being made to delay the investigation in order to protect the accused who has been absconding for more than 50 days," the bench observed.

The court noted that the then-absconding accused is stated to be a "strong man" in the locality and has very powerful connections in the ruling party apart from having been elected on a TMC ticket as a Karmadhaksya of the North 24 Parganas Zilla Parishad.

The bench observed that the state police had played "hide and seek" to shield the accused who "undoubtedly is a highly politically influential person and has demonstrably shown that he is and would be in a position to influence the investigation if allowed to rest with the state police." The court noted that the case which has been registered by ED in its investigation into the alleged ration distribution scam involves highly politically powerful persons which include the accused Sheikh.

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