The Court noted that in the third case, no justifiable reason had been put forth by the State for not registering the offence under the provisions of Explosive Substances Act, 1908.
Holding that the offences came under the Explosive Substances Act of 1908 and considering that the procedure under NIA Act was not followed in all three cases, it directed the officers-in-charge of the concerned police stations to send reports to the State under the NIA Act within three days.
It further directed the State to forward the reports to the Centre within three days of receiving them from the concerned police stations so that the Central government could take an appropriate decision regarding handing over the case to the NIA.
“On receipt of the report, the State Government will take action of forwarding the report in terms of Section 6(2) without any delay but not later than 3 days from the date of receipt of the report from the Officer-in-charge of concerned police station. Central Government thereafter will take an appropriate decision as required by Section 6(3) of the Act,” it stated.
Advocates Phiroze Edulji, Debapriya Samanta, Avijit Roy, Rajdeep Mazumder and Moyukh Mukherjee appeared for the petitioners.
AAAG Samrat Sen, Government Pleader Anirban Ray with advocates Subhabrata Datta, Nilotpal Chatterjee, Md. TM Siddiqui and Debashis Ghosh appeared for the State of West Bengal.
ASG Billwadal Bhattacharyya and advocates Bhaskar Prosad Banerjee and Debasish Tandon represented NIA.
Advocate Susmita Saha Dutta appeared for the Central government.
Source: Barandbench
