The Bhangabera bridge, where the police firing took place on March 14, 2007

New Delhi, Aug. 26: The CBI today approached the Supreme Court to reactivate the Nandigram case, the sudden drive by the agency opening a fresh flank in the run-up to the Assembly polls.

The CBI’s request to the apex court to lift its order restraining the agency from initiating criminal cases against Bengal police officers in the Nandigram firing of March 14, 2007, came a day after Mamata Banerjee met the Prime Minister.

The apex court had allowed the CBI, which was asked by Calcutta High Court to probe the firing that killed 14 land protesters, to conduct its investigation but asked it not to file any criminal case till a Bengal government appeal is decided. The Left government has contested the high court’s move to order the CBI probe without consulting it.

In its short application, filed and listed out of turn today, the CBI urged the apex court to hear and dispose of its plea early “as the matter is of immense importance having far-reaching consequences affecting public interest”.

However, a bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and H.L. Gokhale refused to hear it on an urgent basis. It will now come up along with the state’s appeal in the second week of September.

The CBI request has been prompted by a recent apex court ruling in the 2001 Chhota Angaria case—Trinamul had alleged that 11 of its supporters were killed and their bodies smuggled out by CPM cadres — that high courts could order such probes without the state’s nod if they felt it was required to ensure justice. In view of that ruling, the CBI feels the restraint on criminal cases in the Nandigram probe should also go.

The agency’s move sets the stage for a round of shadow-boxing between the Left government and the Centre over the Nandigram issue ahead of the state polls due in summer next year. Mamata’s Trinamul Congress, a part of the Congress-led UPA at the Centre, has thrown its lot behind the Nandigram villagers.

At the meeting with Mamata yesterday, sources said Manmohan Singh was said to have asked home minister P. Chidambaram to seek a report from the Bengal government on the Trinamul chief’s allegations that the joint forces deployed for anti-Maoist operations were being used by the CPM to regain lost territory.

The high court had suo motu ordered the probe amid the public outrage over the firing. The state appealed soon after. On December 13, 2007, the top court allowed the investigation but with the no-case rider.

Till the restraint is in force, the apex court’s nod is necessary for the CBI to file FIRs and chargesheets against the police officers and other officials who had “transgressed any provision of law” in the firing. The agency has only completed a preliminary probe.

The high court had asked the CBI to identify the victims and the offenders.

But after the Bengal government’s appeal, the top court had said: “The direction of the division bench (of the high court) in so far as initiation and registration of criminal proceedings pursuant to the report filed by the CBI is stayed.”