It took the Calcutta High Court to issue a stern order to the State police administration incidentally headed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to release by Friday evening the half-charred corpse of a CPI(M) couple Debu and Usha Das who were burnt alive inside their hut by alleged Trinamool Congress on the night preceding May 14 panchayat elections for refusing to join their party ahead of rural polls.
A single Bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakrabarty directed the police to hand over the bodies to the victims, son and help him perform the last rites, Sabyasachi the petitioner’s lawyer said.
The dead bodies brought to Kolkata for autopsy had mysteriously gone missing from the police mortuary. The victims’ only child a 19-year-old boy (name withheld as the he was also facing threats to his life) was made to vainly wait at the morgue for more than 100 hours to receive the bodies.
“My repeated requests to return my parents’ bodies failed and so I had to move the High Court,” said the hapless boy who wanted to be a police officer but now has changed his ideas said.
The boy who was currently in hiding for the fear of the Trinamool goons on the prowl said his father was under constant pressure from the Trinamool workers to join that party but he would not.
“My parents had to pay with their lives. I am not in politics. But where will I goIJ I have no one to look after me.” The murder had taken place at Kakdwip some 80 km from the State capital.