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Kolkata: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been formally asked to investigate the siege of judicial officers in Bengal’s Malda, in an incident which marked an obvious escalation of tensions surrounding the special intensive revision of electoral rolls ahead of the assembly polls.

The move came after the Supreme Court issued a sharply worded order in its suo motu writ petition condemning the episode, which took place near the Mothabari BDO office in the Kaliachak area, as a direct assault on judicial authority.

In the March 1 standoff, seven judicial officers, three of whom were women, were trapped inside the BDO office for more than seven hours. These officers had been hearing cases related to disputed voters during the SIR exercise.

Acting on the court’s directions, the Election Commission of India (ECI) wrote to the NIA director general on April 2, seeking a probe into the gherao of officers.

In Mothabari, 79,683 people were “under adjudication” in the final list, a status which effectively puts them in limbo as voters and requires a judicial officer to adjudicate on their validity as voters. According to reports, in one polling station alone, the names of 578 people, including Nazrul Islam, the Trinamool Congress candidate from Motahari, were placed “under adjudication.” When the supplementary list came out, voters saw that only Islam’s name was cleared as a voter, while the remaining 577 people continued to be marked “under adjudication,” further fuelling public anger.

What began as local resentment over deletions in the electoral rolls soon escalated into a prolonged blockade. Protesters locked the gates of the BDO office, blocked the National Highway 12, burned tyres and erected bamboo barricades. Police and central forces later mounted a late-night rescue operation. The episode has since spiralled into a political and constitutional confrontation, with rival parties and activists offering sharply different accounts of what happened and why.

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