New Delhi, April 6 The Supreme Court on Monday exercised its plenary power to transfer cases related to the gherao and attack on seven judicial officers involved in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Malda district to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said that the credibility of the West Bengal bureaucracy is being undermined, and politics is being brought into the secretariat and government offices.
The bench ordered that the 26 people arrested by the state police in connection with the Malda incident be questioned by the NIA, even if they are in judicial custody.
The top court criticized West Bengal Chief Secretary Dushyant Nariala for not answering the calls of the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice on the day of the incident, April 1, when the judicial officers were gheraoed.
The bench asked the chief secretary to apologize to the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice for not answering the calls and said that this represents a failure on the part of the district administration.
The top court said that the Malda incident, in which judicial officers involved in SIR work were gheraoed for hours, was actually pre-planned and motivated.
Seven hundred judicial officers from West Bengal, Odisha, and Jharkhand were deployed in the ongoing SIR process to deal with over 60 lakh objections of those who were excluded from the voter lists during the SIR process.