New Delhi: Two Amta police station personnel in West Bengal’s Howrah district were arrested on Wednesday in connection with the death of student activist Anish Khan. The duo was arrested as they could have influenced the investigation in the case, the state’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee said at a press conference.
“We don’t know the actual incident but we will find out the truth very soon. No laxity will be tolerated. The government is tough,” Banerjee said, amid widespread protests across the state, demanding justice over the “mysterious” death.
The arrested persons were identified as home guard Kashinath Bera and civic volunteer Pritam Bhattacharya of the Amta police station. They were arrested after interrogation, director-general of police (DGP) Manoj Malviya told reporters at another press conference.
According to Khan’s family, four people in uniforms of police and civic volunteers had allegedly pushed Khan off from the third floor of his house in Amta in the dead of the night on February 18, according to his family.
During the incident, the men in uniform had allegedly held his father Salem Khan at gunpoint after barging into the house, citing an ongoing investigation against him, the family said.
The police had earlier claimed that no officers went to Khan’s house that night.
The West Bengal government has formed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the death, but Khan’s family is adamant about their demand for an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
“The family did not hand over the mobile phone of the victim to the SIT. They are not allowing us to collect important materials but still, we have managed to make a breakthrough. We will achieve more success after custodial interrogation of the two arrested,” Malviya said.
The two arrested were booked under IPC section 302 (murder), he said. Bera and two other policemen were suspended on Tuesday.
Khan’s father insisted that since the state police were allegedly involved in the death of his son, there was no point in the same agency probing the incident.
When SIT members visited the house on Wednesday, Salem Khan even showed them an old clipping of then opposition leader Mamata Banerjee, demanding a CBI probe into the death case of Rizwanur Rahman, which rocked Kolkata in 2007.
He questioned that if Banerjee could seek a CBI probe as an opposition leader, then why she was not handing over the investigation to the central agency this time.
The family also turned down the SIT’s proposal for a second post-mortem on the body of Khan in the presence of a magistrate amid allegations that the first one was done without following proper procedures.
The death of Khan, a vocal critic of the TMC government who was at the forefront of many protests, has rocked the state with students of different colleges and universities hitting the streets, questioning why no arrests could be made even after three days of the incident.
Khan, who was earlier with the CPI(M)-backed SFI, was a prominent face of the protests in Kolkata against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He later joined Abbas Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front.
(With PTI inputs)