Kolkata, Feb 12 (IANS) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) team probing the recent case of violence at Beldanga in minority dominated Murshidabad district of West Bengal, on Thursday morning, failed to produce 36 accused, arrested in the case, at a special NIA court.

This is the second time the NIA has failed to produce the accused in court, and the reason is that the Murshidabad district police failed to provide adequate police escort again.

Earlier, on February 5, the NIA team failed to present the accused in the court, and that time, the state police were not able to provide adequate security escorts for the purpose, which became a hindrance in the matter.

It is learnt that although NIA had given a requisition to the Murshidabad District Police, the latter failed to honour that on the grounds of the engagement of police personnel due to the higher secondary examinations conducted by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, which started on Thursday.

The NIA took over the investigation into the Beldanga violence following a direction of the Calcutta High Court giving freedom to the Union Home Ministry to initiate an NIA probe in the matter. The violence broke out allegedly over fake news of a migrant worker from Murshidabad being murdered in Jharkhand.

The news over which the tension and violence broke out last month turned out to be fake, with Jharkhand Police officially giving a statement terming the cause of death of the migrant worker as suicide. The Jharkhand Police also quoted the post-mortem report of the migrant worker in support of their statement.

Although the West Bengal government challenged the Calcutta High Court order at the Supreme Court, a two-judge bench of the apex court dismissed the plea of the state government on February 11 and directed the NIA to submit its status report — whether post-investigation or during the course of investigation — before the Calcutta High Court in a sealed cover, indicating whether a prima facie case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) was made out based on material gathered.

–IANS

src/dpb