Fire broke out at the old building of Jhalda police station on Monday, triggering allegations that evidence related to the March 13 murder of Congress councillor Tapan Kandu were deliberately destroyed.
Sources said several CCTV cameras and the hard disk with footage stored in it were damaged in the fire that broke out around 9am on Monday. Several seized vehicles parked on an open space at the police station were also gutted.
However, the Purulia SP claimed no CCTV camera or hard disk was damaged, only the vehicles were.
“CCTV cameras and the hard disk are safe and intact. They were not damaged in the fire but around 40 vehicles have been gutted,” said S. Selvamurugan, the Purulia SP.
Sources said that the CBI, which is probing into the councillor’s murder, collected some CCTV footage in their pen drive from the new building of Jhalda police station but were looking for more.
Tapan’s nephew Mithun Kandu wondered about the fire. “One of the eye-witnesses of my uncle’s murder was found hanging at his residence the day after we got the order of the CBI probe from Calcutta High Court. Now the fire at the old Jhalda police station occurred during the middle of a CBI probe. We are highly suspicious,” he said.
Sources said the police station was shifted to a new building about 500 metres from the old one eight years ago. But the monitoring system of around 36 CCTV cameras put up across Jhalda town, the new and old police station campuses and the fire brigade station was set up in the old building.
The residence of inspector-in-charge of Jhalda police station Sanjib Ghosh, who is charged by Tapan’s wife Purnima Kandu of trying to bully her husband into joining Trinamul, is also located on the old premises. It suffered no damage in the fire.
A firefighting vehicle was pressed into service. It took two hours to tame the blaze.
Police said the fire was caused by firecrackers thrown by unidentified persons from the immersion procession of a Basanti Puja on Monday.
On Sunday, the CBI took the previously arrested Kalebar, Tapan’s cousin brother Naren Kandu and poultry trader Md Ashik Khan in custody. The fourth arrested, Naren’s son Dipak, has not been taken into custody by the CBI.
Alleged contract killer Kalebar Singh told the CBI during interrogations that police fabricated his involvement in the councillor’s murder. He said that he had come to his sister’s house in Jhalda town from Bokaro when the police picked him up.
The CBI also came to know that Naren and Tapan placed a bet of Rs 5 lakh each over the result of the Jhalda civic election in which Tapan had contested as the Congress candidate and Dipak was his Trinamul rival.
Dipak lost to his uncle Tapan, a four-time councillor. Since then Tapan had been asking for the betting money from Naren. Sources said the money was kept with another person who will be interrogated by the CBI.
The CBI also interrogated Biswanath Kandu, another cousin of Tapan and a local Trinamul leader, for over two hours at the camp.
The CBI also exploring the angle of business rivalry over Tapan’s murder and interrogated his partner and another Congress councillor Pintu Chandra on Monday. Sources said that Tapan and Pintu recently started a business in neighbouring Jamshedpur and Bokaro of Jharkhand and had invested money in it.
