A first Information Report (FIR) should be registered against All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) MP Tapas Paul for his rape and shoot remarks and the West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) will investigate the matter, the Calcutta High Court said on Thursday.
Delivering the judgment, Justice Nishitha Mhatre said that there is no need for a court-monitored probe in the matter.
The matter was brought before her Court after a division bench of Justice Girish Chandra Gupta and Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty gave two different opinions on the verdict of the single bench of Justice Dipankar Datta.
Justice Datta had, on July 28, ordered registering of FIR against Mr, Paul and a court-monitored probe into the matter by the CID in connection with writ petitions seeking action on Mr. Paul.
Justice Mhatre said that the order of the single bench is “partly sustainable”. Whereas she agreed on registering an FIR in the case and a CID probe for the hate speech, she said that a court monitored probe is not required in the matter.
The Judge also refused to grant a stay on the matter for some period as sought by counsel for Mr. Paul. In this situation, the single bench order for registering of FIR by the local Nakasipara police station in the West Bengal Nadia district for next 72- hour stands.
The AITC MP had made outrageous comments of unleashing ‘his boys to rape women of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’ in June 2014 at Nakasipara which resulted in a huge public outrage.
The development comes a day after the High Court directed a probe by Central Bureau of Investigation in the murder case under Panrui police station in West Bengal’s Birbhum district where AITC leader Anubrata Mondal is one of the main accused.
Both the judgments - in the Tapas Paul hate speech case and in the Panrui murder case – have come as a major embarrassment for the AITC Government in West Bengal.
