Justice Rajasekhar Mantha of Calcutta High Court on Friday asked three top officials of the Bengal government to appear before him at 11am on Monday after the trio had failed to heed the judge's earlier order to attend his court on March 18.
On March 15, the judge had summoned chief secretary B.P. Gopalika, home secretary Nandini Chakrabarty and ADG CID R. Rajasekara to attend his court on April 5 and state why the state had failed to carry out a previous order to hand over the Daribhit case from the CID to the NIA.
Justice Mantha had also asked the state to disburse adequate compensation to the next of kin of two students who had died in a clash at Daribhit in North Dinajpur in 2018.
The court's contempt proceedings against the three officials also dealt with the state's failure to disburse the ex-gratia.
"The court should have taken stronger action. If this time, the order is not carried out, the court will issue arrest warrants against the trio," Justice Mantha said on Friday while asking the trio to appear before him on Monday.
Nine days ago, a division bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam had declined to interfere in the order passed by Justice Mantha, asking the three officials to attend his court.
On June 10 last year, Justice Mantha issued the order transferring the Daribhit ase from the CID to the NIA. Two students — Rajesh Burman and Tapas Sarkar — of Daribhit High School died in the clash between two groups on September 20, 2018, over the appointment of a teacher at the institute.
Instead of carrying out the March 15 order, the state government moved the division bench against Justice Mantha's order.
The division bench dismissed the plea on April 3.
Affidavit sought
Justice Jay Sengupta of Calcutta High Court on Friday issued an order asking the officer-in-charge of Mathurapur police station in South 24-Parganas to file an affidavit within a fortnight to state why he did not lodge an FIR against Bapi Haldar, who is contesting as a Trinamool Congress candidate from Mathurapur constituency.
On March 7 this year, a local BJP leader lodged a complaint with the Mathurapur police station, accusing Haldar of embezzling a huge amount of the Krishna Chandrapur gram panchayat. But the police were yet to lodge an FIR against Haldar on the basis of the complaint, the BJP leader said.
