NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a plea seeking CBI probe into the killing of three BJP workers in West Bengal and sought response from the state on why the probe should not be handed over to the central agency.

Agreeing to hear a plea of BJP leader and advocate Gaurav Bhatia who alleged that workers of his political party were being targeted by the ruling party in the state, a bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan issued notice to the state government and asked it to file response.

Bhatia, in his petition, alleged that the environment in West Bengal was hostile to all ideologies which are different from the ideology of the ruling party and members of the BJP are being directly attacked and murdered by the members of the All India Trinamool Congress .

He told the bench that Shaktipada Sarkar, a BJP block president in the Mandirbazar-Dhanurhat area, was killed when he was returning home in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district on July 28 and the body of another BJP worker and undergraduate student Dulal Kumar was found hanging from an electric pole in Balarampur on June 2. In the same district, the body of 18-year-old Tirlochan Mahato, was found hanging from a tree.

“It will not be out of place to mention here that all the three victims, who were brutally murdered were active members of the BJP and were murdered because of a deep-rooted political enmity that prevails between the ruling party and the BJP in the West Bengal. It is clear that there is complicity of state administration and police authorities in the state with those who committed such heinous crimes and the criminals are being protected by the state government. Therefore, the petitioner urges for a fair and impartial investigation of the present crime, so that the perpetrators of the crime can be booked and punished strictly in accordance with law,” the petition said.

“Petitioner has great apprehension that influential political personalities and their henchmen are involved in these brutal murders and it raises basic questions on the efficacy of the investigation and the criminal trial which would be conducted by the state government unless appropriate orders are passed by this court,” he said in his petition, and also pleaded the court to grant a monetary compensation of at least Rs. 50 lakh to the family members of the victims.

