Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said Monday that a special investigation team (SIT) will be formed to probe student leader Anish Khan’s ‘mysterious’. The death of Anish Khan has sparked widespread protests by opposition parties in West Bengal. Mamata Banerjee also holds the Home (Police) portfolio. She said that the SIT will submit its report to her within 15 days.
Banerjee also claimed that Khan who was a Left leader and later joined the Indian Secular Front, used to keep in touch with her party, the Trinamool Congress.
“We are forming an SIT which will be set up by the chief secretary under the DGP and it will also comprise the CID,” Banerjee told a press conference at state secretariat Nabanna.
The chief minister asserted that the investigation will be impartial. She said action will be taken against anyone found to be involved in the death of Khan.
The deceased Khan’s father had earlier alleged that four people had come to their house on the night of February 18 donning police and civic volunteer uniforms. They had pushed his son off the third floor of their house at Amta in Howrah district leading to his death. The father has demanded a CBI investigation into the matter. The police, however, said no law enforcer had gone to Khan’s house at that time.
Banerjee said the death of the student leader was unfortunate. “We had good relations with Anish. Those who are going (to Khan’s house) to show their faces on television do not know that Anish used to keep in touch with us and also helped me in the election,” Banerjee said.
Khan had been with the SFI in the past and a prominent face in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests at Park Circus Maidan in Kolkata in late 2019 and 2020. Opposition parties are demanding an investigation into his death by an independent agency.
