Five CPM workers held in Hyderabad for Netai killings
To be handed over to CBI after production before Jhargram court.
More than two years after nine villagers were killed in indiscriminate firing from a CPM leader’s house in Netai village of West Midnapore, a special team of the West Bengal CID has arrested five accused — all CPM leaders — from Hyderabad.
The accused, including Rathin Dandapat from whose house bullets were allegedly fired, were produced in a West Midnapore CJM’s court on Tuesday, which granted the CID their transit remand for a day. They would be produced before the Jhargram ACJM’s court where the case is filed.
The accused will be handed over to the CBI, which is investigating the case, after production before the ACJM’s court, a government counsel said.
A special CID team, headed by its special superintendent Bharati Ghosh, arrested CPM’s Lalgarh local committee secretary Joydeb Giri, his predecessor Tapan Dev, Rathin Dandapat, who had given his home to the CPM for setting up a camp of armed cadres, Dalim Pandey, who is the cousin of Lalgarh zonal CPM secretary Anuj Pandey and Sheikh Khalilluddin, a West Midnapore district committee member of the CPM, from a hideout in Hyderabad.
“We had received several requests from the CBI seeking assistance from the state police to arrest the accused. Based on specific information, we picked the accused from Hyderabad. They admitted that they were hiding in Nellore earlier and in some other places before taking refuge in the Andhra Pradesh capital,” Ghosh said.
Ghosh was recently removed as SP of West Midnapore district on direction from the Election Commission and was posted as special superintendent of the CID.
Of the 20 accused in the case, 17 have been arrested so far, while three are still absconding.
Nine villagers were killed in indiscriminate firing allegedly from Dandapat’s house at Netai village in West Midnapore on January 7, 2011. The Calcutta High Court had ordered a CBI inquiry into the massacre in February 2011, expressing dissatisfaction with a CID probe then.
The then Left Front government’s appeal against the order was turned down by the Supreme Court.
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