Bengal Post Poll Violence Against Women: Calcutta HC Orders CBI Probe

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate all cases in the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) where there are allegations of murder, crimes against women, rape and attempt to rape in the aftermath of West Bengal post-poll violence.

The rest of the cases pertaining to the post-poll violence will be probed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising of senior IPS officers from the state— Suman Bala Sahoo, Soumen Mitra, and Ranbir Kumar.

A retired Supreme Court judge will monitor the SIT probe, the five-judge bench ruled. The five-judge constitution bench comprised of Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal along with Justices IP Mukerji, Harish Tandon, Soumen Sen, and Subrata Talukdar.

The high court delivered three separate but concurring judgments on a batch of appeals alleging post-poll violence by TMC in the recently concluded assembly elections where the Mamata Banerjee-led government won the mandate.

In the aftermath of the assembly elections held earlier this year in April many people, especially BJP supporters, alleged they were forced to flee their homes for fear of retribution by Trinamool Congress workers.

In a slew of directions, the high court directed the government to compensate the victims affected because of the violence that swept the state on May 2.

The high court further ruled that the scathing remarks made by the seven-member NHRC team constituted to probe the violence was beyond the scope of the committee. In its report, the NHRC had accused TMC, the ruling party of turning the state affairs in a "law of ruler", instead of the "rule of law".

"This was retributive violence by supporters of the ruling party against supporters of the main opposition party," the report had further concluded.

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