Advocate general S.N. Mukherjee told Calcutta High Court on Tuesday that Anis Khan had fallen to his death from the terrace of his house when police had raided the Leftist student leader’s residence at Amta in Howrah on the night of February 19 but added that the law enforcers had no intention to kill him.
Mukherjee also admitted that the probe by the special investigation team (SIT), which had been formed by the Bengal government, had found that the police had not followed proper norms while searching Anis’s residence.
“It has been revealed in the probe that proper rules were not followed when police personnel went to Anis’s residence to interrogate him. The policemen should be prosecuted for going to Anis’s residence without having proper order for it,” Mukherjee told the court of Justice Rajashekhar Mantha.
But at the same time, the advocate general said the police personnel should not be prosecuted under Section 302 of the IPC as they had not intended to kill Anis.
The top lawyer of the Bengal government also said “the role of the police was not proper after the death of Anis”.
Anis’s family members had accused the Amta police of not responding to distress calls after he had fallen to his death from the terrace.
Mukherjee claimed that Anis’s father Salem Khan was not a witness to the incident as he had only heard the sound of his son falling from the second floor of the building.
“The father of the victim could have heard sound if the police had some sort of scuffle with Anis,” Mukherjee said.
After hearing the AG, Justice Mantha said investigators of “this country can do miracles if they are not influenced by political personalities”.
The advocate general spoke before the court while submitting the second progress report of the SIT on Tuesday. The SIT had submitted its preliminary report to the court on April 20.
Following the submission of the report, the judge reposed trust in the SIT probe though Salem urged the court to hand over the case to the CBI.
The court has fixed June 7 for hearing the case again.
The family of Anis had persistently claimed that he had been murdered by the police.
