Newsinc24 Team 
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Trinamool Congress leader Chhatradhar Mahato in the wee hours on Sunday in connection with the murder of a local CP I(M) leader in 2009 at Lalgarh in the Jangalmahal region. Earlier on Thursday, the Calcutta high court had directed Mahato, the former leader of Maoist-backed People’’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), to appear at the NIA office here thrice a week for alleged involvement in the murder case. The court had further said that if there is any breach of its direction, the NIA can bring it to the notice of a lower court, which, if it deems fit, will thereupon record it and permit the agency to take him into custody.It is said that Mahato had failed to appear before the special NIA court on a number of occasions citing various reasons.
Mahato, who was recently inducted into the TMC, was given the responsibility of at least 10 constituencies in three districts ahead of the polls. Voting took place on Saturday in 30 seats, including those in Jangalmahal, once a Maoist hotbed, in the first phase of the assembly election. In February 2020, he was released from jail after 10 years. He was one of the accused in an abortive attempt to blow up former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s convoy in November 2008, and was arrested in September 2009. “I am not going into the merit of the case. But the timing of the arrest is questionable. He was arrested in connection with a decade-old case during assembly elections,” Kunal Ghosh, TMC spokesperson said after Mahato’s arrest.
In March 2020, however, the NIA reopened a murder case in which Mahato was one of the accused. “Mahato was released from jail and has been arrested again on court orders. How can there be any politics in it?” said Samik Bhattacharya, BJP’s spokesperson in West Bengal. Mahato was one of the secretaries of the TMC party’s state committee.
