The attack on a team of Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in Sandeshkhali on January 5 was orchestrated by local strongman Sheikh Shahjahan to prevent them from stumbling upon a cache of both legal and illegal arms stored in his Akunjpara house, the CBI has said in its chargesheet.

In the chargesheet submitted to the court on May 27 on the attack on the ED officers, the CBI said Shahjahan's brother Sheikh Alamgir had subsequently shifted the arms to the house of Abu Taleb Sheikh, an aide to the former Sandeshkhali strongman.

"During subsequent investigation CBI recovered a huge cache of arms, both licensed and unlicensed, along with ID cards and gun licences from the house of one of Sheikh Shahjahan's close associates namely Abu Taleb Sheikh. These firearms were kept at the residence of Abu Taleb by Sk Alamgir, brother of prime accused Shahjahan Seikh," the chargesheet states.

In April, three months after the ED team was attacked, a 10-member CBI team seized arms and ammunition from Abu Taleb's house.

The seized items included three revolvers, a pistol — all foreign made —, an Indian revolver, a Colt Official Police revolver, a country-made pistol, 120 nine mm bullets, 50 cartridges of .45 calibre, 120 nine mm cartridges, 50 cartridges of .380 and eight cartridges of .32.

The Trinamool Congress had blamed the BJP for hatching a plot to discredit the state while the Lok Sabha elections were on. The BJP lost the Lok Sabha seat of Basirhat, which includes Sandeshkhali.

Shahjahan was a Trinamool member of the North 24-Parganas zilla parishad and was suspended from the party following an uprising against him on the Sandeshkhali island.

"During the incident, he (Sheikh Shahjahan) was present in the house but did not open the lock and stopped the government officials from discharging their duties," the chargesheet states.

"Sheikh Alamgir... played an important role in the criminal conspiracy in arranging the mob to prevent the ED officers from conducting searches at the premises of Sheikh Shahjahan...."

Senior officers said call detail records of Alamgir and Shahjahan and other evidence suggested that the two were in touch when the ED team reached Sandeshkhali to raid Shahjahan's residence.

The chargesheet mentions a statement by Mafiur Rahaman Molla, who owns a photocopy shop at the Shahjahan market. He said a civic volunteer of Rajbari police outpost was present outside the market during the ED raid.

"He (civic volunteer) was helpless as the mob did not heed his instruction to stop destructive activities with respect to damaging the (ED's) vehicle parked on the road," read the chargesheet.