The high court on Friday granted anticipatory bail to Ranaghat BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar, who was apprehending arrest in connection with the murder of Satyajit Biswas, Trinamul Congress MLA of Krishnagunge till February 28.

The MLA was killed in February last year amid murmurs that local BJP leaders had plotted his murder.

A division bench comprising Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Suvra Ghosh, however, directed the MP to meet the IO of the murder case and fixed February 18 for the final hearing of his case.

The victim’s family members had lodged an FIR accusing 43 persons in the incident. In the supplementary FIR, names of BJP leader Mukul Roy and Jagannath Sarkar were included in the accused list and investigators had charged the duo with masterminding the crime.

However, in the chargesheet filed by the investigators, the names of Roy and Sarkar didn’t feature.

Few days later, the investigators moved a plea before a Ranaghat court seeking permission to initiate a fresh investigation against Roy and Sarkar.

The investigators informed the court that after seizing the mobile phone of one the accused in the case, his conversations with both Roy and Sarkar were recovered and that’s why fresh investigation against the duo was required.

The Ranaghat court restrained the investigators from including the names of Roy and Sarkar in the chargesheet but allowed them to carry on with the probe against the duo.

Both Roy and Sarkar were apprehending arrest because of the fresh probe. So, they moved an anticipatory bail before the Calcutta High Court. The same division bench of the court had earlier issued an interim order asking the police not to arrest Roy in the case at least till April and directed the investigators to complete the probe by March.