Kolkata, April 2 – A total of 18 people, including Maulana Shahjan Ali, a candidate from the All India Secular Front (AISF) in the Mothabari Assembly constituency in the minority-dominated Malda district of West Bengal, have been arrested on Thursday afternoon in connection with the harassment of seven judicial officers in Kaliachak in the same district on Wednesday night.
All of them were presented before a district court in Malda on Thursday. However, while being presented in court, Shahjan Ali told media persons that he had been falsely implicated by the police because he is an AISF candidate.
"I was not even at the spot where the protesters surrounded the judicial officers. I had gone to attend a function. I was arrested while returning home from that function. There has been a conspiracy against me," said Shahjan Ali.
On Wednesday, seven judicial officers, of whom three were women, were held hostage inside a block office at Kaliachak in Malda district by a group of voters whose names had been deleted during the process of judicial adjudication of voters classified under the “logical discrepancy” category.
However, at around 1 a.m. on Thursday, a large police contingent led by senior district officials reached the spot, dispersed the protesters, rescued the judicial officers, and escorted them to a safe location. They were freed after being surrounded for around nine hours.
There were also reports from the district that even while being shifted to a safe location after their rescue, there was an attempt to attack the convoy.
On Thursday, a division bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Surya Kant strongly denounced the incident and described it as evidence of a complete law and order failure in West Bengal.
The bench also directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to hand over the investigation in the matter either to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) or the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It also issued notices to the West Bengal Chief Secretary Dushyant Nariala, Director General of Police Sidh Nath Gupta, Home Secretary Sanghamitra Ghosh, and the District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police of Malda, asking them to explain why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them.