Amid an eerie calm prevailing over the Bogtui village near Rampurhat town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district after eight people were killed in arson earlier this week, a team of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reached the village on Saturday and started its investigation into the violence. Unidentified people had on March 21 set 10 houses on fire in the village, killing at least eight people, including women and children. The CBI team, consisting of around 20 members, went inside the house where charred bodies of seven people were found.
The Calcutta High Court had on Friday handed over the investigation into the Birbhum killings to the CBI and set a deadline of April 7 to submit its progress report. Meanwhile, the political storm over the Birbhum killings continue to remain unabated, with the ruling TMC claiming that opposition leaders were indulging in “narrow-minded politics over dead bodies” and the BJP accusing the Mamata Banerjee-led party of trying to protect the perpetrators.