New Delhi, Sept. 27: The Bengal government must explain to the Supreme Court in two weeks why the CBI should not start criminal cases against police officers and personnel responsible for the March 2007 Nandigram firing.

Today’s apex court notice to the state government, issued on a CBI petition, comes at a time Nandigram, which changed the face of Bengal politics, is again being brought into focus in the run-up to next year’s Assembly polls.

After Calcutta High Court had dubbed the firing “unconstitutional and unjustified” and ordered a CBI probe, the state government had challenged the order in the Supreme Court.

On December 13, 2007, the top court had allowed the agency to complete its probe and file a report before the high court but restrained it from initiating any criminal case till the state’s appeal had been heard.

The appeal is yet to be heard, but the CBI had petitioned the Supreme Court on August 26 this year to lift the stay.

“Our chargesheet is ready, but we can’t file it,” additional solicitor-general Haren P. Raval told the bench of Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice H.L. Gokhale today.

Bengal government counsel K.K. Venugopal protested: “The state has not even been issued notice.”

He claimed the CBI was yet to file its report before the high court but Raval insisted the agency had done so.

Venugopal defended the state police, saying they went by Bengal’s police manual that asks the force not to fire in the air, since innocent bystanders may die in the process, but at the mob. The high court had struck this rule down as unconstitutional and asked the CBI to probe the firing, he said.

The apex court bench, prima facie, seemed to agree with him. Can you change a rule with retrospective effect and say an offence has been committed, Justice Raveendran wondered. “The seriousness of the issue is a different matter,” he said.

The bench then issued notices to the Bengal government.

The CBI has so far only completed a preliminary inquiry into the firing, which led to 14 deaths. The high court had ordered the probe suo motu (on its own), and Bengal had challenged the court’s power to do so without the state government’s consent.

But the apex court recently ruled in the Chhoto Angaria case that a high court could order a CBI probe without the state’s consent if it felt such an investigation was necessary to ensure justice.

The CBI, therefore, feels the December 2007 stay should go, allowing it to file FIRs and chargesheets against Bengal police personnel who may have “transgressed any provision of law” during the firing.