KOLKATA: A day after TMC’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee held the judiciary responsible for action not being taken against Shahjahan Sheikh, the Calcutta High Court on Monday clarified that it had not passed any order to stay or prevent the arrest of the party’s Sandeshkhali strongman who is facing allegations of land grabbing and sexual assault of women in the strife-hit island in North 24 Parganas.“We will clarify that there is no stay on arrest. A stay on investigation doesn’t mean to stay arrest. There is an FIR registered, he is branded as an accused. He will have to be arrested,” the court said.A division bench presided by Chief Justice T. S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya clarified that the court had only a single judge’s order to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe into the incident of attack on the officers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) when the federal agency tried to raid Shahjahan’s house in a foodgrain scam case.The bench also directed that the accused should be impleaded as a party in the writ petition filed before the court. “But since he is not traceable now, we will direct the registry to issue a public notice in Bengali and English newspapers, having wide publicity in the district,” the court added.The bench was hearing a suo motu case initiated in view of media reports that several women in Sandeshkhali were subjected to sexual abuse by TMC satraps and the lands of tribals were being forcibly taken away in Sandeshkhali.
Source link
