Kolkata, May 21: A three-member committee of the Calcutta High Court probing the communal violence in Muslim-dominated Murshidabad district of West Bengal last month, in its report, has indicated total police negligence and indifference to bring the situation under control before the deployment of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF).

Sources said the three-member committee has highlighted the aspects of this police indifference in a report filed in the High Court’s special division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Raja Basu Chowdhury. The bench had been specially constituted to hear the matters related to Murshidabad violence.

The violence broke out in pockets of Murshidabad like Dhulian, Suti, and Samserganj on April 8, and finally, CAPF was deployed there on the night of April 12 following an order of the same special division bench on the same evening.

While ordering CAPF deployment on April 12 evening, the special division observed that the measures taken by the West Bengal government to control communal unrest in Murshidabad over protests against the newly promulgated Waqf (Amendment) Act turning violent were inadequate.

The special division bench also observed that had the CAPF deployment been earlier, the situation would not have been so “grave” and “volatile”.

Now, the contents of the fresh report given by the three-member committee are totally in line with the observation made by the division bench on April 12.

In the report, a local councillor, Mehbub Alam, was identified as the principal conspirator behind the violence, against whom the police did not act at the time of the violence.

As per the report, all the attacks that were carried out on April 11 from 2 p.m. onwards were led by Mehbub Alam, who himself came to the spot of violence along with miscreants on that day, with the police doing nothing to act against them.

The report has also named one Amirul Islam, who reportedly came to the site of the violence, identified the houses that had not yet been destroyed, and informed the goons, who subsequently set those houses on fire.

As per the report, a total of 113 houses were damaged, and valuables worth lakhs, including jewellery, cash, furniture, and livestock, were looted. The report had also given details of how the district police ignored repeated calls from the members of the victim families. Although the local police station was just 300 meters from where all these incidents took place, the cops took no action.

(IANS)

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