(Top) A police officer speaks to the man who found Jatin Sarkar gasping in the river. (Below) Two villagers enacting how Jatin was pulled out of the river. Telegraph pictures

Behrampore, Nov. 4: Murshidabad police today began probing the death of Jatin Sarkar, over two months after he died and three days after the Supreme Court rapped it for not having registered an FIR.

Jatin, a key witness in the Nithari killings case, apparently drowned in the Bhagirathi in Murshidabad on September 1, nine days before he was to depose in a Ghaziabad court.

His widow had alleged that he was killed and dumped in the river, but the police had refused to register the FIR.

Behrampore police today tried to reconstruct the drowning, like the CBI had attempted to enact Rizwanur Rahman’s death on the railway tracks in Calcutta.

The police called Sankar Sarkar, who saw Jatin being washed away about 200km from Calcutta. Sankar, 52, a neighbour of Jatin who was bathing in the river, saw him in waist-deep water.

“He was still breathing and I took him to the Behrampore Sadar Hospital. Doctors declared him dead there,” Sankar told Behrampore inspector-in-charge Dilip Ganguly.

He also told the police that he had talked to Jatin half an hour before he went to the river.

Ganguly asked Sankar to stand at the spot from where he saw Jatin. A local youth, Shasthi Haldar, was told to act as Jatin.

Ganguly asked Sankar whether Jatin smelt of alcohol. “I told the inspector that I did not smell any alcohol and that Jatin was gasping when I pulled him out of the river.”

The riverside was apparently deserted around 10.30am, when Jatin was found. “There were only a few women,” Sankar said.

“It is too early to comment,” Ganguly said.

Asked if the CBI director and two others named as co-accused in the complaint lodged by Jatin’s widow Bandana would be questioned, Ganguly said he did not know. “The law does not prohibit us from interrogating anybody in connection with a case,” he added.

Jatin, who used to pull a rickshaw in Noida, was the father of one of the Nithari victims, 19-year-old Pinki.

He sought a reinvestigation of the case in the court of the special CBI judge in Ghaziabad on April 28. At least 19 human skulls and bones were dug up from near the house of Maninder Singh Pandher in Noida in December 2006.