Suvendu aide’s murder: Court frees man wrongly arrested by police

KOLKATA: CBI approached a Barasat court on Tuesday seeking the release of an accused in the murder of Chandranath Rath, an aide to Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari, saying the state police team that was earlier probing the crime had picked up the wrong person, reports Dwaipayan Ghosh.

The court accepted the plea and ordered the release of Raj Singh, arrested in UP by an SIT of West Bengal Police on May 11, five days after the murder. The investigation was later handed over to CBI. The central agency submitted in court that Raj, who was picked up along with Mayank Mishra and Vicky Maurya, had an alibi for the day of the murder.

Raj was in UP when Rath was gunned down, says family
Raj’s family has claimed he was in Uttar Pradesh when Rath was gunned down in Madhyamgram on May 6, two days after the West Bengal assembly poll results were announced and three days before Adhikari was sworn in as the chief minister. The family, reportedly well connected in Uttar Pradesh’s political circles, moved the highest offices in the state seeking justice. Sources said UP police’s intelligence wing and special task force found the family’s claim to be true.

Raj’s mother Jamvanti Singh told reporters after the arrest that her son had travelled with her to Lucknow on May 7 to attend the wedding of MLC Pappu Singh’s daughter. They stayed in a guesthouse near the wedding venue. “Raj attended the wedding and returned to the guesthouse around midnight. We left for Ambedkar Nagar the next morning,” she said. The family visited the shrine of Makhdoom Ashraf Baba in Ambedkar Nagar, where they offered a chadar, and left for Ayodhya.

“We had a darshan (in Ayodhya) and later stopped at a place to eat. Police intercepted us when we were leaving, and took away Raj,” his mother said. CBI sources said they had tightened their grip on “the actual cell” behind the murder. The agency recently arrested Rajkumar Singh from Ballia and Vinay Rai, alias Pumpum, from Varanasi.

“Multiple individuals are involved in the contract killing. The mastermind is still at large,” a senior investigator said. Officers believe Rajkumar’s interrogation will help them bridge the gap between the killers and the person(s) who ordered Rath’s murder.