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| The four accused on their way to surrender before the court in Balurghat on Friday. Picture by Ramen Mondal |
Balurghat, Oct. 31: Four persons accused of double murder surrendered before a court here today after living as free men for the past 21 years.
Baidyanath Roy, 60, Upen Roy, 68, Phulu Roy, 61, and Jhoru Roy, 60 — residents of Lakshminarayanpur village in Tapan — were sentenced to life imprisonment by the additional sessions court here in 1986 on charges of the murders which took place in 1983. However, they had been granted bail by Calcutta High Court in 1987 following an appeal.
On July 24 this year, a division bench of the high court comprising Justice T.K. Giri, and Justice A.K. Banerjee upheld the sessions court judgment and ordered all five accused to surrender.
Today, four of them surrendered before the additional fast track court here, which sent them to jail. The fifth accused, Harihar Chowdhury, 65, was arrested from a village in Malda’s Bamungola after the high court rejected the bail pleas.
According to court records, the five — all of them are farmers — were accused of killing two persons following a clash centring around the possession of a plot of agricultural land on November 11, 1983.
The district committee member of the RSP, Dilip Siddhanta, said all the accused were members of the party’s farmers’ wing.
“That year, we were spearheading a movement to acquire land for distribution among sharecroppers. A clash had ensued between our party members and those of the CPM’s farmers’ wing. Kalipada Roy, 50, and his son, Deben Roy, 27, two CPM members, were killed in the clash.”
A peasant leader of the CPM, Dhirendranath Bhattacharya, who is now dead, had filed a police compliant against six men. While one of the accused had been acquitted by the additional sessions court, the five had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Challenging the lower court order, the RSP had appealed to the high court and the five were granted bail. “Balai Roy, now the advocate-general of Bengal, was our lawyer,” Siddhanta said.
The RSP has again decided to challenge the high court division bench’s order in the Supreme Court.