Karat supports handing over Burdwan probe to NIA

CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat today supported the Centre's decision to handover the Burdwan blast investigation to NIA and said that it was not an encroachment on the state's powers as felt by the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal.
"It is not a local incident and has serious ramifications for the state and the country. There are external links," Karat said at a press conference here.
"I don't think there is any encroachment of state powers," Karat said when asked about the Mamata Banerjee government's reservations about handing over the investigation into the Burdwan blast from the state CID.

"This is a question of the country's security, it has external dimensions," the CPI(M) general secretary said.
"That is why our party wanted the investigation to be done by a competent agency and NIA is the fittest," he said.
Attacking the Narendra Modi government at the Centre a day after it decided to hand over the investigation to NIA, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had in a Facebook post said, "Now-a-days, the Central Government tends to frequently and unnecessarily interfere in state matters what is not at all expected as per our Constitution."

The Centre had on October 9 decided to hand over to NIA the probe into the bomb blast in Burdwan in West Bengal in which the role of terror groups is suspected, a decision which the West Bengal government said was taken suo motu.

The blast at Khagragarh in Burdwan district took place on October 2 and was being probed by the state CID initially.
It was perhaps for the first time that the Centre has taken a suo motu decision to hand over a probe into a bomb blast case in any part of the country to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) since this premier agency was created in 2008 after the Mumbai terror attack.