A special investigation team (SIT), probing the death of the father-son duo at Jafrabad in Murshidabad’s Samserganj in April, submitted a chargesheet to a court in Jangipur on Friday, holding 13 persons responsible for the crime.
Harogobindo Das and his son Chandan Das were killed at Jafrabad during the violence on April 12 over protests against the Waqf Amendment Act.
In the FIR filed by Das’s wife, she had alleged that her husband and son had been dragged out of their home by a mob and hacked to death on the road. The two bodies were found with multiple wounds.
The 900-page chargesheet was submitted within 55 days of the SIT taking up the investigation into the murders that prompted many of the residents of Samserganj and other violence-affected places to cross the Ganga and take shelter at Parlalpur High School in neighbouring Malda.
“The chargesheet has been drawn under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including ones that deal with murder, rioting, trespassing and dacoity. Two sections under the Arms Act have also been added,” a senior officer of the SIT said.
Police said Ziaul Sheikh, a resident of Sulitala Purbapara, the neighbouring village of Jafrabad, was the prime accused in the twin murder case.
The police arrested him from a hideout at Chopra in North Dinajpur district. Ziaul was the fourth person who was arrested in this case.
The police subsequently arrested nine more persons in this case, and the details of these arrests find a detailed mention in the chargesheet.
When chief minister Mamata Banerjee reached Samserganj in May, she couldn’t meet the families of Harogobindo and Chandan. She was to have handed over cheques for ₹10 lakh to the two families.
Mamata alleged that the BJP had hidden the families from her.
The TMC and the BJP had blamed each other for the communal violence.