The inspector in charge (IC) of Rabindranagar police station and the subdivisional police officer of Maheshtala were transferred on Saturday, three days after violent clashes erupted in Maheshtala, on the city’s southwestern edges, lasting five hours and injuring several cops.

IC Mukul Mia was transferred to Darjeeling district in north Bengal as an inspector, and his superior, SDPO Kamrujjaman Molla, was shifted to the state armed police as an assistant commandant of the third battalion.

The transfers came a day after leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari moved a division bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam in Calcutta High Court, seeking an urgent hearing on his petition for an NIA probe into the Maheshtala violence.

Sujan Ray will replace Mia, and Syed Rezaul Kabir will be the new subdivisional police officer of Maheshtala, replacing Molla.

While senior home department officials said that the transfers were part of a routine reshuffle within the police, some insiders in the state government admitted they were a knee-jerk reaction to the street violence that raged in Maheshtala for over five hours on Wednesday.

At least 19 police personnel — including a divisional deputy commissioner of Kolkata Police — were injured, and several vehicles were torched or damaged in the violence that erupted barely metres from Rabindranagar police station.

The trouble began on Tuesday night with a dispute over building a platform for a tulsi plant where a makeshift stall once stood. On Wednesday morning, protesters damaged a wall around the land in opposition to the tulsi platform.

The clashes that broke out in Maheshtala, under Rabindranagar police station, spread to Nadial in the Kolkata Police area.

Police reinforcements from the Howrah, Bidhannagar and Barrackpore commissionerates had to be rushed in to rein in the mob.

The crowd that dispersed from Maheshtala moved to the Nadial-Rajabagan area, turning it into a virtual battlefield targeting the police.

Sources said the group that started the violence in Maheshtala continued it in the Nadial-Rajabagan area, leading the police to suspect the attack was planned.

Several former senior police officers with decades of experience have blamed an intelligence failure and lack of preparedness for the escalation of the violence.

So far, the police have arrested 40 people in connection with seven cases registered over the incident.