Two students of Class X — Atanu Dey and Abhishek Naskar — were strangled in a moving car on August 22 and their bodies were dumped in a canal along the Basanti Highway.
Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday lambasted the Kolkata Police for not being proactive in investigating the murder of two young boys who had gone missing a few days back. The case will now be probed by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), even as the state unit of BJP continues to demand a CBI probe.
Two students of Class X — Atanu Dey and Abhishek Naskar — were strangled in a moving car on August 22 and their bodies were dumped in a canal along the Basanti Highway near the city. While the families questioned the delay in finding the boys, the bodies were identified on Tuesday.
What makes the police believe that it was a premeditated murder is the fact that a rope was found in the car. Meanwhile, the officer-in-charge of the Baguihati Police Station, where a missing complaint was initially filed, has been removed after the parents of the boys said the police did not take their complaint seriously.
Senior West Bengal minister Firhad Hakim said, “The officer-in-charge of Baguihata Police Station has been removed and the investigation will now be done by the CID. The police have been asked to complete the investigation soonest and have also been ordered to bring the main accused before the court.”
The bodies of the boys were found by Basirhat police and were sent to a morgue as unidentified. The bodies remained there till the arrest of one of the accused who said the duo was murdered on August 22. According to sources in the police, Banerjee pulled up the police force for lack of coordination.
As of now, four accused have been arrested for murder. Abhijit Bose (25), Shamim Ali (20), Sahil Molla (20) and Dibyendu Das, who too is in his twenties, were arrested. However, the main accused, Satyendra Chowdhury, and one other are yet to be arrested.
What happened on August 22?
As of now, the police have got to know that one of the accused had lent Rs 50,000 to Atanu and although he was the main target, they killed Abhishek too in order to remove evidence.
The group had allegedly kidnapped the two class X students to extort the Rs 50,000 from their parents to buy a motorcycle. However, the police are also looking at other angles too. According to the police, the accused and the deceased had visited a motorcycle showroom before the two were murdered.
While the parents had received ransom messages, no contact could be established with the kidnappers, said the police, adding they moved with caution to avoid any untoward incident. The police also revealed that they had not presumed that the boys had died until one of the arrested accused confessed to the murder.
Meanwhile, a massive outrage has erupted in West Bengal over the dual murder.
