Agartala: High Court of Tripura has served a notice to the state seeking a report on the attack on CPI-M MLA Sudhan Das on June 26.
After serving notice to the police Justice Arindam Lodh fixed the case for the next hearing on July 29. The miscreants, allegedly backed by the ruling BJP, had attacked CPI-M MLA Sudhan Das at Rajnagar of Belonia in South Tripura. Besides MLA, police has registered a suo-moto case and another case by the ruling BJP.
In the case lodged against MLA Das, police included section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) despite being injured seriously in the attack while the complaint filed against the miscreants by the victim was registered under all bailable sections, which have attracted the attention of the court.
“Even then the sufficient ingredients to include sections like attempt to murder in the complaint lodged by MLA Sudhan Das, police frame the case in bailable sections to protect the criminals,” the petitioner’s advocate Shankar Lodh told the court during the hearing.
The MLA was attacked in broad daylight in his constituency when CPI-M was agitating to press for their four-point charter of demands including against the price hike of petroleum products. The miscreants set several party offices of CPI-M on fire in the area leaving many others injured.
However, police didn’t arrest the accused persons, instead allegedly harassed the MLA in the name of investigation. Finally, he moved to the high court seeking action against the perpetrators and appropriate direction for police in such cases.
According to CPI-M, after the BJP-IPFT government came to power in 2018 more than 200 incidents of physical attacks on the opposition were reported while 152 attacks on shops and houses belonging to the opposition parties have been carried out by ruling party cadres and around 1,200 people have been injured so far. But in none of the cases did police take any action against the accused persons, said a party member.
