The Centre on Friday (24 January) decided to transfer the Maharashtra’s Bhim-Koregaon violence case to the National Investigative Agency (NIA), reports Times of India.
The development comes after reports emerged that Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar wrote to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the police action in the case.
The Pune police had arrested nine activists in the case for their alleged links with proscribed CPI (Maoist).
The order signed by Union home ministry joint secretary Dharmender Kumar stated that the Centre was of the opinion that the case needed to be investigated by the NIA given the “gravity of offence” involved, the “role” of CPI (Maoist) and the imperative of unearthing the “larger pan-India conspiracy involved”.
It should be noted that section 5 of the NIA Act empowers the MHA to take over investigation of a case without permission or recommendation of the state government.
However, the decision by Centre to transfer the case from Pune Police to NIA has left the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government in state fuming.
Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who belongs to NCP, has condemned the Centre’s decision and said that the move by MHA was against the Constitution.
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