The CBI on Saturday said it had registered another 10 cases in connection with the post-poll violence in West Bengal, a day after officially confirming that 11 separate cases were registered in the matter. This has taken the tally of total FIRs to 21.
In probing one of the cases, registered on August 25, the agency conducted searches on Saturday at 15 different locations and arrested the two accused. This case relates to an incident at Chapra, under Nadia district of West Bengal, the agency said in a statement.
Both arrested accused will be produced before the competent court, the agency said. The CBI teams probing these cases have been provided CRPF security cover. These cases were registered by the CBI following orders of the Calcutta High Court.
The high court had recently handed over the investigation of serious crimes such as rape and murder during the post-poll violence in West Bengal to the Central agency after a report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that flagged serious concerns over the serious crimes after the poll’s results were out on May 2.
The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress was re-elected in bitterly contested eight-phased polls.
In a unanimous judgment on a batch of PILs seeking an independent probe, the five-judge Bench also ordered the constitution of an SIT of State police officers to probe all other cases.
The SIT will include Suman Bala Sahoo, Soumen Mitra and Ranveer Kumar, all IPS officers of the West Bengal cadre. The Bench will monitor the investigations by both the CBI and the SIT and asked the two agencies to submit status reports to the court within six weeks.