The high court on Thursday said the “court’s mind is not free from doubt” that the FIR against the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over the Sandeshkhali raid was “pre-timed”, based on a “procured” complaint to show that the case against the agency officers was lodged before other related complaints that day.
Justice Rajasekhar Mantha, in whose court the ED had moved a petition seeking an order to quash the FIR against its officers, said he felt there was a need to examine the case diaries of the two FIRs filed by the Bengal police.
One of the FIRs is against the ED officers who went to raid Trinamul leader Shahjahan Sheikh’s home in Sandeshkhali in North 24-Parganas and the other is against an “unknown mob” that had allegedly assaulted the officers.
“There is clear inconsistency between the two FIRs, which disclose completely different versions of the incident. The court’s mind is not free from doubt that the FIR No. 7 (against the ED officers) may have been pre-timed based on a procured complaint, to show prior FIR on the same day against the officials of the ED. The allegations of the learned counsel for the ED cannot therefore be brushed aside,” Justice Mantha said.
The central agency on Thursday submitted that the ED officers who had gone to raid Shahjahan’s home in connection with the public distribution system scam found the house locked from inside.
Counsel for the ED, Dhiraj Trivedi, said that despite several attempts by the ED to contact Shahjahan, he was not available. nor accessible through mobile phone.
“After examining his call details, it was found that Shahjahan Sheikh had made 28 calls when the ED officers were knocking on his door. It is clear that he had instigated the mob action outside his house that day,” Trivedi submitted.
In his order, Justice Mantha said: “Upon returning to the police station, sub-inspector Pinaki Sarkar (who is the complainant in the case registered by Bengal police against the ‘unknown mob’) files a typewritten complaint at about 1.30pm which is registered as FIR No. 8 of 2024 dated 5th January, 2024. The FIR is signed by the officer-in-charge, Nazat Police Station, one Suvasish Pramanick.”
The order further said: “Curiously, by this time, however, the officer-in-charge appears to have already signed and registered another FIR at about 10.30am in the morning being FIR No. 7 of 2024 on the same date i.e. 5th January, 2024. The said FIR No. 7 of 2024 was registered immediately upon a complaint of one Didarbaksh Molla.”
Advocate-general Kishore Datta submitted that the police acted according to the Supreme Court’s guidelines and that the high court could not interfere with the registration of an FIR.
At this, the court cited another case study and said “malafide registration” of an FIR was a ground for quashing one.
The matter will be heard again on January 22.
