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The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered a CBI investigation into the murder of Trinamool Congress leader Bhadu Sheikh, in apparent retaliation to which nine persons were burnt to death in West Bengal's Birbhum district.
Prayers were made before a division bench presided by Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava for ordering a CBI probe into the murder of Bhadu Sheikh as well, claiming that the two incidents were interlinked.
The bench, also comprising Justice R Bharadwaj, ordered the transfer of the murder case of Sheikh from the state police to the CBI for the purpose of a complete investigation.
The bench had on March 25 ordered that the probe into the March 21 violence at Bogtui be handed over to CBI from the West Bengal government-appointed special investigation team.
The state DGP had on March 22 said that the violence at Bogtui took place within an hour of the murder of Sheikh, the deputy chief of the local panchayat.The place of the murder of Sheikh is about a kilometre away from Bogtui.
The four people arrested from Mumbai in connection with the Birbhum killings were brought back to Kolkata on Friday morning by the CBI, an official said.
They were brought back to Kolkata on transit remand, granted by a Mumbai court till April 10, he said.
"We will be taking them to Rampurhat later in the day to speed up the investigation. They will be grilled along with other accused arrested there," the official told PTI.
The CBI on Thursday arrested the four persons -- Bappa, Shabu, Taj Mohammad and Serajul -- from Mumbai where they fled to following the massacre in Rampurhat's Bogtui village on March 21. These were the first arrests made by the central agency after taking over the probe.
Nine people died of burn injuries after their houses in Bogtui were allegedly firebombed following the murder of local TMC leader Bhadu Sheikh.
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