HC directs CBI to probe unnatural death of man

The Calcutta High Court Friday directed the CBI to take over investigation from the state CID in the unnatural death of a 19-year-old man in 2012, which his father alleged was a case of murder.

Justice Debangshu Basak directed that an officer of the rank of superintendent of police of the CBI will head the investigation.

Ramen Samanta was found dead in a swimming pool in Burdwan town of Burdwan district on September 2, 2012.

Seeking a CBI investigation into the case, petitioner Deb Kumar Samanta, father of the deceased, claimed that his son was murdered as he had come to know of some secrets about the death of two of his friends three years ago in 2009.

The two men -- Ashish Bhagat and Kaushik Roy -- had died allegedly in separate motor accidents on the same day September 26, 2009, in two different districts of West Bengal.

A CBI investigation was ordered into the death of Bhagat by another bench of the high court in November 2017 on a petition by his family.

A petition by the family members of Kaushik Roy seeking a probe by the central agency into his death is pending before the high court.

Deb Kumar Samanta claimed on being informed about the death of his son in the swimming pool, he went there to find the body with external injury marks.

He also claimed that a local doctor who had first examined his son after the incident, had not found any water inside the stomach of the body.

The petitioner's lawyer Bhaskar Bandopadhyay submitted before Justice Basak that post-mortem report did not mention any injury marks on the body and that the viscera report had indicated presence of remnants of ethyl alcohol.

Even as the petitioner claimed that a CD of the post-mortem given to him was doctored, police told the court that the original recording had gone missing from the custody of the Burdwan police station.

He further told the bench while the charge sheet was filed by the CID before the trial court, hearing is yet to begin in the case there.

Claiming that the case was made out by the CID without appreciating the facts in hand, Bandopadhyay prayed for a CBI investigation into the death of Ramen Samanta.

The counsel for the CID submitted that investigation had been done as per procedure and that there was no lacunae on its part.

Hearing both the parties, Justice Basak directed the CBI to take over the investigation and disposed of the petition.