Chief secretary B.P. Gopalika, home secretary Nandini Chakrabarty and CID ADG R. Rajasekaran appeared virtually before Justice Rajasekhar Mantha of Calcutta High Court on Monday and were told by the judge to refrain from repeating the act of not responding to judicial orders.

“This court does not have any personal grievance against you people. When the court called you, you did not attend the court. So the court had to issue the same order again...You should have attended the court when it called you only to pay honour to the judge’s chair, not me. I hope this type of act will not be repeated again,” Justice Mantha told the three officials after advocate general Kishore Datta had informed the court that Bengal police had handed over the documents of the Daribhit case to the NIA and the central agency’s lawyer Arun Kumar Mohanty had admitted receiving the same.

Mohanty also told the court that on receiving the documents, the NIA had lodged an FIR to start its probe.

On June 10 last year, Justice Mantha issued an order transferring the Daribhit ase from the CID to the NIA. Two students — Rajesh Burman and Tapas Sarkar — of Daribhit High School in North Dinajpur died in a clash between two groups on September 20, 2018, over the appointment of a teacher at the institute.

On March 15 this year, the judge summoned Gopalika, Chakrabarty and Rajasekaran to attend his court on March 18 and state why the state had failed to hand over the Daribhit case from the CID to the NIA and pay the adequate compensation to the next of kin of the two deceased students. The summonses were issued based on a case moved by the students’ relatives, who said the June 10 order had not been implemented.

Instead of carrying out the court’s directive, the state authorities moved an appeal before the division bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and prayed for a stay on Justice Mantha’s order. But the bench declined to issue a stay on the summonses.

As the three officers had failed to appear before Justice Mantha on March 18, the
same judge on Friday asked the trio to attend the court on Monday.

Justice Mantha had also said if the officers failed to attend court on Monday, the court might issue arrest orders against them.

While making the observation on Monday, Justice Mantha said: “Since the issue of awarding compensation to the family members of the victims is there and since the case is being heard by the division bench, the bench headed by the Chief Justice would take a decision in this regard.”