Murshidabad violence: Calcutta HC orders formation of review committee

Kolkata: A special division bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Thursday, directed the formation of a committee to review the situation in minority-dominated Murshidabad district of West Bengal, which had been hit by violence over protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Act.

As per the verbal order of the special division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Raja Basu Chowdhury, the said committee will have at least one member each from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), West Bengal Human Rights Commission, and West Bengal Legal Aids Services Authority (WBLASA).

The special division bench observed that many residents in the troubled pockets of Murshidabad got displaced from their homes due to the violence in the district last week, and the committee will work to ensure that such individuals can return to their respective homes.

The special division bench, at the same time, directed deployment of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel would continue to remain deployed at Murshidabad till further orders.

The same division bench last week directed the deployment of CAPF in the troubled pockets of Murshidabad to bring the situation under control. In that order, the bench observed that the measures taken by the West Bengal government to control communal unrest were inadequate.

The division bench also observed that had the CAPF deployment been earlier, the situation would not have been so “grave” and “volatile”.

The division said that besides paying compensation to the families where violence-related deaths have occurred, the administration should ensure that normal functioning at different schools in the troubled zone is not affected.

So far, there have been reports of three violence-related deaths from Murshidabad, out of which two have been reported from the same family at Samserganj, where the victims are the father and son, Hargobindo Das and Chandan Das.

Although the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh each for each victim’s family, the members of the Das family have rejected the compensation offer.

A team of the National Commission of Women (NCW), which took a suo motu cognisance of the violence at Murshidabad, is arriving in Kolkata. On Friday and Saturday, they would be interacting with the women members of those families who were displaced from their homes following the violence.

The NCW team will also hold meetings with the Murshidabad district magistrate and district police superintendent.

IANS