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Tripura : Woman’s skeleton in Chief Minister’s septic tank |
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The ruling Left government in Tripura headed by Manik Sarkar is currently passing through an embarrassing situation with the discovery of a woman’s skeleton from a septic tank at the Chief Minister’s residence.
According to reports, the state Home Department is looking into all the records of security deployment at the Chief Minister’s residence since 1990 in a frantic attempt to unravel the mystery behind the sensational discovery.
Samples of the remains will be sent to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Calcutta to ascertain the victim’s age, time of death and other details. A police official said the samples would be despatched after being “processed”.
Workers of the Agartala Municipal Council found the skeletal remains while cleaning the septic tank on Tuesday.
Hemant Kumar Pratihari, the chief scientist at the State Forensic Laboratory in Agartala, said “nothing definite” could be said about the remains until comprehensive tests were conducted at the laboratories in Hyderabad and Calcutta.
Sources in the Home Department said the investigation was presently focusing on identifying the security personnel who were deployed at the Chief Minister’s residence since 1990.
Apart from police and Tripura State Rifles personnel, a unit of the Rajasthan Armed Constabulary had been deployed there in 1990. The main bungalow was then occupied by Surajit Dutta, who was the Public Works Department Minister in the Congress-Tripura Upajati Juba Samity coalition government. The then Chief Minister, Sudhir Ranjan Mazumder, chose to stay in his private residence.
PCC vice-president Tapas De demanded that Chief Minister Manik Sarkar be arrested, while the State unit of the BJP questioned the efficacy of security arrangements at the residence.
The Left Front government has decided to hand over the case to the CBI after initially announcing a CID inquiry. Sarkar is understood to have taken the decision after consulting his colleagues in the Left Front and senior police officials. However, a section of the Opposition criticised the move, contending that the CBI was already overburdened and a judicial inquiry by a sitting high court judge would have been more appropriate.
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