Three men were arrested early on Tuesday at Sarberia and Kanmari in the Sandeshkhali block, in North 24-Parganas, for their alleged involvement in the attack on ED officers and CRPF personnel on January 5.
Anarul Molla, 55, Ajijul Sheikh, 38, and Hazinur Sheikh, 32, were arrested based on CCTV footage of the alleged attack, police said.
Altogether, seven persons have been arrested in the case.
The ED officers, accompanied by CRPF personnel, had gone to Sandeshkhali to raid the house of Trinamul leader Shahjahan Shiekh in connection with the public distribution system scam.
Residents of the area, allegedly at Shahjahan’s instigation, attacked the raiding team. Shahjahan has remained untraced since.
Three ED officers — assistant director Raj Kumar Ram, Somnath Dutta and Ankur Gupta — had to be admitted to hospital.
“After going through the CCTV images, we could identify the three and started tracking them electronically. Anarul and Ajijul were rounded up first. Hazinur was picked up based on inputs from the two,” said an officer at the local Nazat police station.
“The arrested trio will help us identify several others who were involved in the January 5 attack.”
The state police on Tuesday transferred Sananda Goswami, a deputy superintendent of police who was overseeing the probe in one of the Sandeskhali cases, to the Asansol-Durgapur commissionerate. Her colleague Dipendra Tamang, who was also part of the probe, has been transferred to Malda.
“There is nothing remarkable about these transfers. Over 100 DSPs have been transferred,” said a home department official.
Shahjahan
A lawyer representing Shahjahan informed Justice Jay Sengupta of the high court on Tuesday that if the court wanted, the leader could be made a party to the case filed by the ED seeking a CBI probe into the January 5 incident.
The judge asked Shahjahan’s counsel to file an application.
During the two-hour hearing on Tuesday, advocate-general Kishore Datta submitted that the police had added IPC Section 307 (attempt to murder) to the charges slapped on the accused.
The court directed the police to install CCTV cameras around Shahjahan’s house “as early as possible” and mount round-the-clock surveillance.
Justice Sengupta, who was hearing the ED’s plea for a CBI probe into the attack, asked the state lawyers: “Why didn’t the police seal the house? What was recovered from the search operation at the house?”
He also wondered why only seven persons have been arrested.