Days after the political slugfest between the BJP and TMC in West Bengal over the Burdwan blast case, the Union home ministry on Thursday stepped in and handed over the case to the National Investigation Agency. The move comes as the first instance by the NDA government to invoke the NIA Act which allows the Central government to “suo motu’’ hand transfer a case from the state police to the NIA to probe its terror and inter-state border ramifications.
Sources said an NIA team headed by an inspector-general rank officer will be dispatched to Kolkata on Friday to formally take over the investigation of the case.
The NIA team is expected to seek the cooperation of the West Bengal police and coordinate with it to help complete the probe in the case.
Four persons, including two women, have so far been arrested in connection with the grenade explosion at Khagragarh in Burdwan district which left two suspected terrorists dead.
The Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal was not keen to hand over the case to the central agency.
However, the BJP and the CPI(M) had accused the state police of mishandling the evidence in the case . The NIA will press charges under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in the case.