The Calcutta high court on Tuesday ruled that the Centre should decide whether two bomb blasts that took place in Bengal’s South 24 Parganas and Malda districts earlier this year should be probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
In the first incident that took place on March 29 in the Basanti area of South 24 Parganas, a villager named Farooq Sardar was killed when crude bombs allegedly made and stockpiled inside his home went off, destroying the single-storey structure.
In the second incident, five children aged between 8-9 years were injured in the Kaliachak area of Malda on April 24 when they mistook a crude bomb lying inside a mango orchard for a ball and tried to play with it.
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) took cognizance of the incident and sought a report from Bengal’s chief secretary and director general of police, asking them to order a time-bound probe.
A Calcutta high court lawyer, Anindya Sundar Das, filed separate petitions seeking NIA probe into the incidents.
After hearing the petitions, the division bench of chief justice Prakash Shrivastava and justice R Bharadwaj ruled on Tuesday that the offence in both the cases comes under the Explosive Substances Act and can be probed by NIA.
{{/usCountry}}After hearing the petitions, the division bench of chief justice Prakash Shrivastava and justice R Bharadwaj ruled on Tuesday that the offence in both the cases comes under the Explosive Substances Act and can be probed by NIA.
{{/usCountry}}The court directed the Centre to take a decision on the course of the investigation, Das told HT.
The court also asked the local police in both districts to submit a complete report and directed the state to forward it to the Centre, he added.
There was no reaction from the state government till Tuesday afternoon.