May 12: Around 10.30 this morning, Alok Raj stopped at a roadside dhaba to get his breakfast packed on the way to Calcutta to catch a Ranchi flight.

“I’m going to Hazaribagh, where a CRPF constable was killed last night. It is urgent, I have to reach there by afternoon,” the deputy inspector-general said.

Asked if he would return to Nandigram, he chuckled. “I will be here again. I’m going only to take stock of the situation in Hazaribagh.”

Asked why he put the phone in loudspeaker mode in the presence of the media when Seth called him around 9.10am yesterday, Raj said: “People know everything now. Everything is clear.”

He blamed the “system” without naming the CPM or the administration while reacting to the molestation charge levelled by CPM cadres. “It’s fabricated and the system is to be blamed for this. Let there be a CBI probe. I should be punished if I have done such things.”

Will he move court as he had said yesterday? Raj smiled again: “Dekhte hain (Let’s see).”

The sudden departure fuelled rumours that he had been removed after the standoff.

The CRPF headquarters rubbished such rumours.

Contacted in Delhi, CRPF director-general V.K Joshi said Raj had gone to Nandigram only for a day. “He (Raj) has not been transferred.”

“He is permanently posted in Ranchi and had gone to Nandigram for a day to oversee law and order during the election,” Joshi told The Telegraph.

CRPF jawan Prashant Patil and the officer in charge of the local Charhi police station, Vijay Thakur, were killed in an encounter with Maoists in the hilly Hazaribagh yesterday.

Jharkhand police sources said Raj, a former Hazaribagh superintendent, knew the area well. “He is free to move anywhere in Jharkhand as he is the CRPF officer in charge of Jharkhand,” an official said.

Asked whether Raj had instructions to leave, Bengal police inspector-general (law and order) Raj Kanojia said the state did not keep track of CRPF personnel. “It is not the duty of the state police.”

CRPF chief Joshi said he was aware of the conversation in which MP Lakshman Seth had asked the officer to remain confined to the camp.

Before leaving Nandigram, Raj submitted a written complaint to East Midnapore superintendent of police S.S. Panda regarding the alleg- ed assault on CRPF constable Dimple Sharma by the officer in charge of Nandigram police station, Debashish Chakraborty.

“I have mentioned how she was abused and assaulted by the OC. The officer’s allegation that he was beaten up by CRPF personnel is baseless,” Raj said.

The state poll panel today ordered repolling in 23 booths, including four in Nandigram, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ten persons were injured in clashes between CPM and Trinamul Congress supporters in Nandigram today and some 300 villagers fled home.