New Delhi, March 01: The Supreme Court Tuesday took serious exception to the West Bengal government challenging a Calcutta High Court order asking the CBI to probe the Jan 7 violence in Netai village in West Midnapore district which left nine people dead and several injured.
“The highest judicial authority (chief justice of high court) in the state has ordered it (the probe) after going through the case records, still it doesn’t inspire confidence (in the state government),” an apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly.
“This is very unfortunate,” the court told senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi, who appeared for the West Bengal government.
The petition by the West Bengal government is aimed against the high court order of Feb 18.
The state government has challenged the high court order on the ground that the state police were already probing the case.
Rohtagi said that the high court Feb 14 commended the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for doing a good job. The senior counsel wondered what triggered this turn around by the high court.
As Justice Ganguly persisted with his observation that the direction for CBI probe was coming from the highest judicial authority of the state, Rohtagi said that even the “chief justice could also be wrong”.
Rohtagi told the court that after the 2010 constitution bench judgment of the apex court, the courts could order CBI probes into an incident without the consent of the state government only in exceptional circumstances involving the abuse of human rights.
When the court recalled that the incident has been described by the governor as a carnage, Rohtagi said the state government was not minimising the seriousness of the incident.
The senior counsel said that a day after the incident, the Calcutta High Court Bar Association moved the high court seeking a CBI probe.
The main accused in the case is Abani Singh, who was a member of West Bengal’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist.
The court asked the state government to file more papers relating to the case when the hearing resumes Wednesday.
-Agencies