Central government must decide whether West Bengal blasts should be probed by NIA: Calcutta High Court

The Calcutta High Court has ruled that the Central Government must decide whether the National Investigation Agency (NIA) should investigate three bomb blasts which occurred in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas and Malda districts in March and April this year killing one and injuring at least six persons [Anindya Sundar Das vs The State of West Bengal & Ors.]..A bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj found that although in all three cases, an offence under NIA Act was made out, the officers-in-charge of the concerned police stations did not forward reports to the State government as required under the NIA Act. "We find that though in these cases scheduled offence under NIA Act has been committed but provisions of Section 6 have not been complied and Officer-in-charge of the concerned police station has not forwarded the report to the State Government ‘forthwith’ in terms of Section 6(1) of the NIA Act," the court noted..The first incident occurred on March 29 in South 24 Parganas district, killing a man after crude bombs purportedly built and stockpiled within his home exploded, destroying the single-storey structure.In the second incident that took place on March 30 in Malda district, a nine-year-old girl was injured after an explosion took place in a field as a result of bombs being stored there.In the third incident, five children were injured on April 24 in Malda district after they mistook a homemade bomb lying under a litchi tree for a ball and attempted to play with it..The Court was hearing three writ petitions filed by two persons seeking handing over of the investigation of the blasts to the NIA.In two petitions filed by Calcutta High Court advocate Anindya Sundar Das, it was underlined that the offences registered in the first two cases were scheduled offences under the NIA Act and, therefore, the procedure under the Act — that states that a report must be forwarded to the State Government so that it can refer it to the Centre in order to decide if the case should be handed over to the NIA — was required to be followed.He contended that due procedure was not followed by the police and requested the Court to exercise its jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution and transfer the investigation to the NIA.In the third petition filed by one Arijit Majumdar, it was contended that during investigation into the third incident, large number of bombs were recovered from the area but the police wrongly registered the offence under Explosives Act of 1884 instead of Explosive Substances Act of 1908.Since the offence was committed under the 1908 Act, which is a scheduled offence under the NIA Act, it was submitted that the same should be investigated by the NIA..The State did not dispute that the offences committed in the petitions were scheduled offences under the NIA Act, but argued that every scheduled offence under the NIA Act need not be investigated by the central agency. It referred to the preamble of the NIA Act and stated that only under the following four circumstances, scheduled offences can be referred for investigation:Offences affecting the sovereignty, security and integrity of India;Offences affecting the security of State; Offences affecting friendly relations with foreign States; and Offences under Acts enacted to implement international treaties, agreements, conventions and resolutions of the United Nations, its agencies and other international organisations.It also did not dispute that the procedure as prescribed under the Act was not followed and the report as required by Section 6(1) was not forwarded but argued that if this procedure was not followed, Central government could have exercised suo motu power under Section 6(5) of the Act.The State placed reliance on the Bombay High Court's decision in Pragyasingh Chandrapalsingh Thakur vs. State of Maharashtra. Through Additional Chief Secretary and Ors to support its argument..The Court noted that in the third case, no justifiable reason had been put forth by the State for not registering the offence under the provisions of Explosive Substances Act, 1908.Holding that the offences came under the Explosive Substances Act of 1908 and considering that the procedure under NIA Act was not followed in all three cases, it directed the officers-in-charge of the concerned police stations to send reports to the State under the NIA Act within three days.It further directed the State to forward the reports to the Centre within three days of receiving them from the concerned police stations so that the Central government could take an appropriate decision regarding handing over the case to the NIA. "On receipt of the report, the State Government will take action of forwarding the report in terms of Section 6(2) without any delay but not later than 3 days from the date of receipt of the report from the Officer-in-charge of concerned police station. Central Government thereafter will take an appropriate decision as required by Section 6(3) of the Act," it stated.Advocates Phiroze Edulji, Debapriya Samanta, Avijit Roy, Rajdeep Mazumder and Moyukh Mukherjee appeared for the petitioners.AAAG Samrat Sen, Government Pleader Anirban Ray with advocates Subhabrata Datta, Nilotpal Chatterjee, Md. TM Siddiqui and Debashis Ghosh appeared for the State of West Bengal.ASG Billwadal Bhattacharyya and advocates Bhaskar Prosad Banerjee and Debasish Tandon represented NIA.Advocate Susmita Saha Dutta appeared for the Central government..[Read Order]