A division bench of Calcutta High Court on Wednesday declined to interfere in Justice Rajasekhar Mantha's order to hand over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) the probe into the death of two students of Daribhit High School in North Dinajpur during a clash in 2018.

The division bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam also refused to quash Justice Rajasekhar Mantha's directive to issue contempt rules against three senior state government officials.

The Bengal government had moved an appeal before the division bench against the orders passed by Justice Mantha.

Justice Mantha had on March 15 asked chief secretary B.P. Gopalika, home secretary Nandini Chakrabarty and ADG CID Rajashekaran to come to his court on April 5 and clarify why contempt proceedings should not be drawn against them for not obeying the order that the court had passed 10 months before.

On June 10 last year, the judge ordered the NIA to probe into the death of the two students — Rajesh Burman and Tapas Sarkar — on September 20, 2018, in a clash between two groups of people over the appointment of a teacher in the school.

While issuing the probe order, Justice Mantha observed that since explosives had been used during the clash, the NIA should conduct the investigation. The court also asked the state to take steps to grant adequate compensation to the nearest kin of those killed.

Since the CID had been conducting the probe, the judge asked the state agency to hand over papers relating to the incident to the NIA immediately.

The order followed a petition by the family members of the deceased students.

Earlier this year, petitioners of the case moved the court again and claimed that the NIA probe order was yet to be carried out. When the matter came up for hearing, NIA counsel informed the judge that the CID was yet to hand over the documents to the central agency. Then, the judge issued the contempt order, which the division bench also upheld on Wednesday.

While dismissing the appeal, the division bench held: "This court does not find any discrimination in the single bench's order. So, the order passed by the trial court would prevail."

The division bench asked the CID to hand over the documents relating to the case to the NIA immediately.