Arrested CISF Commandant brought to Kolkata

Port Blair, Mar 10 (UNI) The Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) has taken K Suresh Kumar, a 48-year-old Kochi-based Central Industrial Security Force commandant, accused of murder of a lawyer-cum-social activist in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, to Kolkata.

Officials in Andaman today said earlier Kumar was arrested by the CBI after more than three-year-long investigation of 32-year-old Vasantha murder case in Andamans.

''Vasantha, who was working with Supreme Court lawyer and noted human rights activist Nandita Haksar in a Myanmarese refugee camp, was murdered at her residence in the Andaman island on December 1,2003,'' official said.

The lawyer, who was living with her child in Port Blair, the capital town of Andaman, was pierced to death with needle like object on her neck.

After various political and social pressures, the case was handed over to the CBI when the Andaman and Nicobar police failed to get a breakthrough.

The CISF commandant was serving as an Assistant Director of Intelligence Bureau in Port Blair at the time of the murder. He later joined the CISF and moved to New Delhi.

He was remanded to judicial custody for 14 days by a local Andaman court recently.

''Kumar will be most probably interrogated with an Arakan Rebel Lulu, who is presently on trial, and kept in Kolkata jail with 33 other Arakan rebels,'' a highly placed source told UNI today.

Lulu and 33 other Arakan rebels were living in Port Blair under house arrest when the murder took place and are supposed to be a link for CBI.

The Arakan rebels' trial was recently shifted from a Port Blair court in Andaman-Nicobar to the City Sessions Court in Kolkata.

UNI