A group of angry lawyers allegedly vandalised the court room of Chief Justice Mohit Shantilal Shah of the Calcutta high court on Friday. They were protesting against their forcible eviction by the police from a room in the court premises following a dispute over its allotment on Thursday night.

Citu, the trade union of the CPI(M), has called a day-long transport strike across the state on Saturday, protesting the hike in the prices of petro products. All public vehicles will be under the pur-view of the strike, excepting the private vehicles and the railways.

Four persons were sentenced to life imprisonment by a district court for murdering an accused-turned-key prosecution witness in the kidnapping of city-based shoe baron Partha Roy Burman.

A top Maoist leader had sent written instructions to Bapi Mahato ordering him to carry out the train sabotage to cause maximum casualties. The arrested activist of People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) has revealed this to the police during interrogation. State director general of police Bhupinder Singh informed this on Wednesday. “The leader is a central committee member of the CPI(Maoist) who has a very strong command in the Jangalmahal,” he said.

The arrested activist of People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, Bapi Mahato obediently followed the Maoist command not just before but even after the Gyaneswari Express disaster on May 28. After carrying out the horrendous act of sabotage in the tracks which led to the derailment of the ill-fated train, the 23-year-old prime accused was in constant touch with the rebel leaders in the Jangalmahal.

Giving a wake-up call to its ranks, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, on the day of completion of 33 years of Left Front’s power in Bengal, said that the party will have to do an introspection to do a turnaround within the time span left before the Assembly polls in 2011.

Bapi Mahato, alleged mastermind of the Gyaneswari Express sabotage, was arrested from Jamshedpur by the West Bengal police on Sunday morning with Jharkhand police help.

Days after losing eight members in an encounter with the security forces in Ranjha jungles, the 80-member Maoist squad has started regrouping. After the encounter, this squad, one of the largest Maoist squads in the Junglemahal, had disintegrated. The first meeting to chalk out a strategy to re-unite and reorganise the squad was

The security forces gunned down eight armed Maoists and succeeded in recovering their bodies from Ranjha jungle in Salboni, West Bengal. The rebels usually ensure that the police is unable to lay its hands on slain Maoists’ bodies.

In one of the most successful encounters of recent times, the security forces at Ranjha jungle in Salboni, West Midnapore gunned down eight armed Maoists and even succeeded in recovering their bodies. Usually, Maoists ensure that police does not lay its hands on bodies of their comrades felled by police bullets. The dead include three women.