Calcutta, March 19: Police personnel charged by the human rights commission with killing people in their efforts to quell clashes will not be considered for promotion or any other benefits.

Home department officials today said the police have been informed about the government’s decision, which Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee revealed in the Assembly on the concluding day of the budget session.

The chief minister told the House that the decision stemmed from a recommendation by the National Human Rights Commission.

The home department officials said the government received the rights panel directive in February. It asked Writers’ to conduct a Criminal Investigation Department probe whenever an innocent person died in a police-people clash. The investigation, the commission said, would have to be finished within six months.

Bhattacharjee said: “The National Human Rights Commission recommendation told the government not to promote police personnel against whom charges of killing innocent people during a clash… are proved in an inquiry conducted by the CID.”

While inquiring into such cases, the CID will have to speak to the relatives of the victims and get their version recorded, Bhattacharjee said.

“If it is proved that a person has died in police firing during a clash between the police and the people, the government will have to compensate the family of the victim suitably,” the chief minister added.

The officer-in-charge of a police station under whose jurisdiction such a case comes up will have to maintain a separate file on it.

A state human rights commission source said they had made the same recommendation earlier. “But the government did not honour it.”