The court noted that although the complaint on the basis of which Nirapada Sardar was arrested was lodged on February 10, the police had drawn up the FIR a day earlier
Several villagers who spoke to this correspondent, on the condition of anonymity, said it didn’t take Shahjahan long to rise up the Trinamul ranks. He became deputy chief of the gram panchayat after the 2018 rural elections, and won a seat in the North 24-Parganas zilla parishad in 2023
As police and local Trinamul MLA Sukumar Mahata looked on, the villagers “freed up” the ground, playing football and planting trees along its boundary wall and sending out a message that Shahjahan’s reign of terror was over
The ED raids in the area to probe the PDS “scam” brought to light another “scam”, that of land grab, which, if true, can turn out to be an embarrassment for chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who stormed to power in 2011 riding an anti-land acquisition movement