Explosives Being Frequently Used In Rallies, Religious Ceremonies, Says Calcutta HC While Transferring Ram Navami Violence Case To NIA

The use of explosives substances and hurling of bombs have become regular features during rallies and religious ceremonies, observed the Calcutta High Court while transferring to NIA, the probe into the incidents of violence that occurred in the state last month during the Ram Navami celebrations.

The bench of Acting Chief Justice T. S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya said that in the state of Bengal, at least twelve such violent incidents had taken place since April 2021 wherein weaponry, arms, ammunition, artillery and bombs were used by the miscreants causing great loss of life and public properties.

The Court further noted that in more than 8 orders concerning the violent incidents, it had to transfer the probe to the NIA as the state police underplayed the true state of affairs.

In fact, with respect to the recent Ram Navami violence, the Court observed that prima facie, there had been a deliberate attempt on the part of the concerned police not to register any offence under the provisions of the Explosives Substances Act "fighting shy of resorting to the procedure required to be complied with under Section 6(1) of the NIA Act".

The Court also observed that during the violence, the mob became furious and assaulted the police with bamboo sticks and threw bricks on the police and also damaged one government vehicle and thereafter set fire to another vehicle and when mild force was used to disperse the mob, they became more furious and again started to assault police personnel with bamboo sticks, iron rods, stones, bricks, swords, displaying firearms with a view to kill police personnel, however, in the seizure list, only glass bottles and sticks and other weapons found mention.

In view of this, the Court doubted the very seizure report when there was a specific complaint made on 03.04.2023 that bombs were hurled and people were injured with heavy bleeding injuries.

The Court said that in the FIR pertaining to the incident, there is a mention of the acid bottles and in view of this, necessarily, offence under the scheduled Act having been committed, the procedure under Section 6(1) of the NIA Act should have been resorted to

"In the other seizure lists which have been drawn on 03.04.2023 records seizure of swords. Thus, from the above facts it is evidently clear that despite the offences being committed under the Act mentioned in the schedule to the NIA Act, no case has been registered under the provisions of such Act. It raises a series of doubts in our minds as to whether this was a deliberate attempt by the investigating police fighting shy of resorting to the procedure required to be complied with under Section 6(1) of the NIA Act...It is not clear as to why the police have not registered any offence under the provisions of the Explosives Substances Act. Thus, the question would be as to whether the state police have purposely failed to register any offence under any of the scheduled enactments fearing that the matter will have to be transferred to the central agency for investigation and further action. This would be a good reason for the court to transfer the investigation to a central agency," the Court said.

Consequently, the Court stood convinced that no useful purpose would be served by directing the state police to register cases under the Explosives Substances Act or under any other scheduled act as it noted that the matter has travelled beyond the said stage and that it wa a fit case where the entire investigation should be transferred to the National Investigation Agency with a direction to the Central Government to exercise their power under Section 6(5) of the NIA Act.

With this, the Court directed the state police to transfer all the FIRs, documents, materials seized, CCTV footage etc. to the appropriate authority of the National Investigation Agency, who on receipt of all the entire materials shall commence an investigation and proceed with accordance with law.

The Court passed this order in a bunch of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) pleas, including the PIL plea filed by West Bengal Leader of Opposition and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari seeking an NIA probe into Ram Navami violence.

Appearances

For the petitioners: Advocates Soumya Majumder, Srijib Charkarborty, Anish Kumar Mukherjee, Suryaneel Das [For the Petitioner in WPA (P) 151 of 2023]; Advocates Sabyasachi Chatterjee, Sayan Banerjee, Akashdeep Mukherjee, Badrul Karim, Kiran Sk., Dipankar Das [Petitioner In WPA (P) 154 of 2023]; Petitioner in person Priyanka Tibrewal

For the state: A.G. S.N. Mookherjee, with Advocates Anirban Ray, Md. T.M. Siddique, Amitesh Banerjee, Nilotpal Chatterjee, Avishek Prasad, Debashis Ghosh, A. Pandey.

For UOI: A.S.G. Asok Kumar Chakraborty, with Advocate Sukumar Bhattacharya

For NIA: D.S.G.I. Billwadal Bhattacharya, with Advocate Debasish Tandon

For CBI: D.S.G.I Dhiraj Trivedi, with Advocate Shailendra Kr. Mishra

Case title - Suvendu Adhikari vs. State of West Bengal along with connected matters

Case Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Cal) 120

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