The Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday said it had registered seven first information reports related to alleged sexual offences that took place during the post-poll violence in West Bengal last year, PTI reported.

A total of 29 such cases were referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation by the National Human Rights Commission since July.

West Bengal witnessed a spell of incidents of violence following the Assembly election results that came out on May 2. Various news reports put the toll between 11 and 14, but the police did not confirm the numbers.

Advertisement

The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress blamed each other for the deaths of multiple party workers.

The Calcutta High Court on August 19 ordered a CBI investigation into cases of murder and crimes against women after the West Bengal Assembly elections.

The CBI submitted the status report of the investigations before a division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava on Monday, PTI reported. At that time, the agency had registered 50 regular cases and one preliminary inquiry into the post-poll violence. The chargesheet was submitted in 10 cases.

Advertisement

“It is clarified that CBI had received 29 number of complaints of sexual offences from NHRC till December 22, 2021,” said agency spokesperson RC Joshi on Tuesday. “Out of these, two cases have been decided by the CBI for handing over to State SIT on the grounds of nature of offences, in line with the mandate given in the orders of the Calcutta High Court.”

He added that while seven first information reports were registered based on complaints received from the National Human Rights Commission, the remaining were under process.

The CBI said that it had taken over 39 of the 64 cases that were referred to it by West Bengal Police, according to PTI. Till September 3, the agency had arrested three persons in connection to the allegations of crimes against women.