Siliguri, Aug. 22: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leader accused of masterminding Madan Tamang’s murder disappeared from custody this morning, bringing to light a string of lapses on the CID’s part.
The CID is yet to explain why Nickole Tamang had been kept in a guesthouse just outside Siliguri town last night instead of the designated police lock-up, or why its sleuths had sent their police escorts back at 9pm.
Nickole, 42, Morcha central committee member and “old friend” of the outfit’s chief Bimal Gurung, was arrested in Darjeeling on August 15 for the daylight killing of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League chief in the hill town on May 21.
The CID said he went missing at 7am from Pintail Village, a complex of 40 cottages protected by high walls that the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council uses as guesthouses.
D.P. Singh, chief of Darjeeling police who are backing up the CID probe into Madan Tamang’s murder, said Nickole was in the custody of a five-member CID team. “Around 7.30am, I was informed that he had escaped,” Singh said.
He said Nickole “might head for the hills or board a train or bus” and that the police and the Sashastra Seema Bal were watching highways, railway stations, the bus terminus and the Nepal and Bhutan borders.
The Morcha called an indefinite strike in Darjeeling district from 1pm today and said the hills “could be on fire” if the police failed to produce Nickole within 12 hours. It said it feared that an ailing Nickole may have “collapsed or died” of torture and that the police were hiding this.
CID inspector-general P. Nirajnayan was mum on why his sleuths had taken Nickole to Pintail Village and why they had broken the rules to spend the night there with the captive. The team, led by inspector Ardhendu Shekhar Pahari, had brought the accused to Siliguri on Thursday after a Darjeeling court granted the CID 12 days’ custody.
“Over the past three days, they took him to several places for investigation but brought him back to Pradhannagar police station to spend the night in the lock-up,” the Darjeeling police chief said.
“But yesterday, the team did not act according to rules and kept Nickole with them at Pintail Village. I had no clue... I learnt only this morning that he had been kept there.”
Nirajnayan said two CID men, sub-inspector Aniruddha Chatterjee and constable Arabinda Kumbhakar, had been suspended for dereliction of duty. He did not explain why the other three were spared, merely saying: “They (the suspended duo) were supposed to keep a watch on him.”
The police expressed surprise that someone could escape from the fortified Pintail Village, situated off NH55. “The whole compound is surrounded by an 8 to 10-foot-high boundary wall with spikes. Each cottage too has high walls,” an officer said.
“The Indian Reserve Battalion guards the sole entry point round-the-clock. Another 75-80 IRB men are billeted in the compound; they would have accosted any stranger.”
The hill council’s administrator, B.L. Meena, lives and works in one of the cottages, and the IRB occupies several. Some 20-25 of the cottages are now vacant.
The CID team had taken the hill council’s permission to spend Saturday night in cottage No. 29, sources said. Earlier, Morcha leaders often stayed in the compound and Nickole would have known the layout well.
Intelligence officials said the police began the search for Nickole only around noon, and that too without pictures of the accused, who is hardly a high-profile figure.
Source: The Telegraph
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