Calcutta High Court (Appellete Side)
Suman Sankar Chatterjee vs State Of West Bengal & Ors on 27 September, 2022
Author: Prakash Shrivastava
Bench: Prakash Shrivastava
27.09.2022 Item No. 9 PA(RB) WPA(P) 493 of 2022 Suman Sankar Chatterjee Vs. State of West Bengal & Ors.
Mr. Joydeep Kar, ld. Sr. Adv.
Mr. Srijib Chakrobarty, Mr. Rajdeep Majumdar, Mr. Aditya Mondal, Advocates ... for the petitioner Mr. S.N. Mookherjee, ld. Advocate General Mr. T.M. Siddiqui, ld. AGP Mr. Nilotpal Chatterjee, Ms. Adreeta Pandey, Advocates ... for the State Mr. Billwadal Bhattacharyya, Ld. DSGI Mr. Ayanabha Raha, Advocate ... for the CBI The plea raised in this public interest petition is that between 2015 to 2017, more than 20,000 cattles were seized by the Border Security Force (BSF) which were in the process of being transported across the border to the Bangladesh by paying illegal gratification to the security force personnel and custom officials. It is alleged that in that process, several local as well as State politicians, mainly associated with the ruling party of the State were involved. Further plea of the petitioner is that the CBI has registered the FIR and that the Court of the Learned Judge, Special (CBI) Court at Asansol in case no. R/C 0102020A0019 had passed certain orders in the 2 course of investigation by the CBI. It is also disclosed that on the complaint filed by the HQ 78 Battalion BSF dated 23rd of November, 2019, the State Police Authority had also registered an FIR in the year 2019 being FIR No. 731 of 2019 dated 24th of November, 2019 under Sections 406/120B/420/34 of the IPC and Section 11(1)(a), (h) and (k) of the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals Act, 1960. In that FIR, final report in the form of charge-sheet was filed on 13th of February, 2020. The proceedings in respect of the case registered by the CBI were challenged before this Court in CRR No. 810 of 2021 and by the judgment dated 28th of July, 2021, it was found that no illegality was committed in the ongoing investigation and no interference in the investigation by the CBI is required, hence, the CRR was dismissed.
It is alleged that in order to interfere in the investigation by the CBI, the State authorities had made a prayer for further investigation before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, which has been allowed by order dated 12th of July, 2022.
Further allegation is that since powerful personnel close to the ruling party in the State are involved in the cattle smuggling case, therefore, the State is now trying to interfere in the investigation by the CBI, taking advantage of overlapping of the investigation by the State 3 agency. In this background, a prayer has been made in the writ petition to transfer the further investigation in the Raghunathgunj Police Station Case No. 731 of 2019 to the CBI.
Learned counsel for the petitioner has submitted that investigation in the hands of the CBI is comprehensive which includes all the three issues namely cross-border cattle smuggling, evasion of custom duty and involvement of Government officials in precipitation of the crime. He submits that CBI has already filed charge-sheet and three supplementary charge-sheets and investigation is going on and that the State Police had registered the FIR on the same allegation and the overlapping investigation by the State Police agency will hamper the investigation of the CBI, therefore, at this stage, an interim prayer has been made to stay the investigation by State agency.
Learned Advocate General has submitted that the FIR has been registered by the State Police agency on completely different issue relating to theft of the seized cattle and that after filing the charge-sheet further investigation has been permitted by the competent Court on 13th of February, 2022.
Learned counsel for the CBI submits that the issue relates to international cattle smuggling and that after two years, the State agency had made a prayer for 4 further investigation in the case registered by it and investigation by the State agency on overlapping issue will hinder the investigation by the central agency.
We have heard the learned counsel for the parties and on perusal of the record. We are of the opinion that till the respective stand of the parties comes on record in the form of affidavit, it would not be proper to permit the State investigating agency to enter into the field in which the central investigating agency is already investigating. Hence, we direct that the State investigating agency on the plea of investigating the offences relating to RC Case No. 19 of 2020 will not enter into the subject matter and connected field of investigation being conducted by the CBI in the FIR being RC 0102020A0019 and will ensure unhampered investigation by CBI.
The prayer made by learned Advocate General for grant of three working weeks' time to file the affidavit-in- opposition is allowed, thereafter, affidavit-in-reply be filed within one week.
List on 14th of November, 2022.
(Prakash Shrivastava, C.J.) (Rajarshi Bharadwaj, J.)