Kolkata, Sept. 14 -- The Calcutta High Court has handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) the probe into the disappearance of a woman in 2017, noting that the state police had failed to submit a final report before the jurisdictional trial court despite the passage of years.
A division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Aryak Dutt was hearing a habeas corpus petition pending since 2019. The woman, the sister-in-law of the petitioner, went missing on April 20, 2017. Mathurapur police station subsequently registered a case under Sections 363 and 365 of the IPC.
The court noted that the state had submitted reports from time to time and that its latest report, dated August 14, 2026, detailed numerous steps taken to trace and recover the missing woman. However, she remained untraced. The bench specifically recorded that the police investigation had not resulted in submission of a final report before the jurisdictional court. In these circumstances, it held that changing the investigating agency would be appropriate.
The CBI will now take over the investigation and constitute a Special Investigating Team comprising an officer of Superintendent of Police rank and two officers of its choice. The state police have been directed to hand over all investigation records and materials to the CBI.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.