Krishnanagar, Dec. 4: A CPM member and his four associates were arrested today for occupying government land to build two brick kilns on the outskirts of Kalyani more than eight years ago.

Sushanta Biswas, a former zonal committee secretary of the CPM's Kalyani unit was accused of building two brick kilns in Majherchar on the riverbed at Kalyani, 50 km from Calcutta, along with Chitto Debnath, Bankim Chatterjee, Mona Bag and Dilip Roy.

A month ago, Biswas was ousted from the zonal committee but was later retained as an ordinary member.

Additional police superintendent Biswarup Ghosh said today that the five were charged with illegally occupying government land.

'All five persons were arrested and have been remanded in judicial custody for 14 days,' said the police official.