Calcutta High Court on Tuesday handed over a custodial death case at Maturia police station in Nadia in August 2023 to the CBI.

The Maturia police station officer-in-charge and his six colleagues were accused in
the case.

“After verifying the series of events that took place after lodging of complaint and filing of case by the petitioner, this court feels it fit to hand over the probe into the issue to CBI, “ Justice Tirthankar Ghosh said and asked the state authorities to hand over all documents relating to the case to the CBI with immediate effect.

The order followed a petition by Manjura Bibi, wife of the victim Saukat Ali Mondal.

Niladri Sekhar Ghosh, the counsel appearing for Manjura, said that on the night of August 16, 2023, the Maturia police station OC and five other policemen came to the victim’s residence to look for his brother Mohan.

“Mohan was earlier arrested by police in connection with an NDPS case but obtained bail thereafter. On that night, Mohan was not at home. Then the OC asked Saukat to pay ₹3 lakh or else, his brother would be arrested in a fresh NDPS case,” the advocate said.

Saukat refused to pay the amount since his brother was not at home, the counsel said.

But the next day, Saukat’s body was discovered in a bamboo bush. Manjura later learnt that, unable to bear police torture in the lock-up, Saukat died.

Manjura wanted to lodge complaints against the police but was not allowed to. She reported the incident to the district police administration and managed to lodge
her complaint.

The counsel said: “Soon after the complaint was lodged, my client and her brother-in-law were implicated in a series of criminal cases, including NDPS.”

Manjura finally moved the bench of Justice Jay Sengupta of the high court. After the jurisdiction of the judges was changed, the case came up before Justice Ghosh.