Cooch Behar, March 10: The additional chief judicial magistrate of Dinhata, Gopal Dalmia, today granted interim bail to 13 members of the Forward Bloc in connection with a demonstration on February 5 that turned violent and led to police firing, killing five party members.

All the 13 Bloc members, including the party’s Cooch Behar district unit secretary Udayan Guha, had surrendered in court in the morning. Each of them had to sign a bond of Rs 2,000.

The court asked them to appear before it again on March 20.

Five Bloc members had died in the police firing, while a National Volunteer Force personnel died the next day of injuries sustained during the clash. The subdivisional officer of Dinhata, Debabrata Chakraborty, had filed an FIR against 57 party members.

The police had arrested 40 Bloc members, who were named in the FIR, on the same day. They are now accommodated in a state-run lodge in Siliguri, following a Calcutta High Court order that had granted them bail.

Of the remaining 17, Pradip Barman had died in the firing. Samsul Haque and Keshab Mondal have been under treatment in SSKM Hospital in Calcutta and Benami Barman has been admitted to Maharaja Jitendra Narayan Hospital in Cooch Behar. The three could not appear in court today.