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| Bapi outside the Jhargram court. Picture by Samir Mondal |
Jhargram, June 22: When the cloth wrapped around Bapi Mahato’s face was removed this afternoon, a familiar face greeted him.
The bespectacled Chhatradhar Mahato leaned forward to confirm if it was indeed his comrade. Then he broke into a smile. Bapi smiled back.
The leader of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities was among 20-odd undertrials in the lockup at Jhargram court, where Bapi, the prime suspect in the train track sabotage that killed 150 people, was produced.
Two of the biggest names linked with the Maoist insurgency in Bengal shared the courtroom lockup for about 30 minutes before the magistrate called Bapi’s name.
Bapi was still in the maroon T-shirt and white dhoti in which he was when the police picked him up from a guesthouse on the outskirts of Jamshedpur on Sunday.
His sister Minu went to a policeman with a trouser she had brought from home. The police searched the garment and let her walk up to the lockup. In the crowd, Bapi had missed his sister. Chhatradhar gestured him to come forward.
After a silent greeting, the trouser was handed over. Bapi changed using the dhoti like a towel.
The packed courtroom saw Bapi looked exactly like the “wanted” man in the photo circulated by the CBI.
Before additional chief judicial magistrate Sheikh Muhammad Rezza, the lawyer for the CBI, Partha Tapaswi, recounted the police version of events from the day of the train tragedy to the arrest. He sought a fortnight’s police remand for Bapi and his relative Bimal Mahato.
The defence lawyer wondered why the same remand was being sought for both. Nothing was found on Bimal to suggest his role in the sabotage, Kaushik Sinha said.
The police said Bimal had provided Bapi with three phones with which he used to stay in touch with others involved in the case. “Bimal might also have some vital information.”
The magistrate sent them to 10 days’ police custody. They will have to be produced in his court again on July 1.
The cloths wrapped around their heads again, the two left for Kharagpur at 4.30pm.
Chhatradhar was in the court in connection with the kidnapping of six CPM leaders in Lalgarh in 2009.
Another Maoist, Telugu Dipak alias Venkateswara Reddy, who had been arrested from Behala on March 2, was produced in a court in Bankura’s Khatra in connection with the murder of a police officer in 2005. He was sent to 14 days’ police custody and taken back to Calcutta by road.