CBI is not neutral:Basu

Kolkata, Jul 6 (UNI) Alleging that the CBI had always acted against the CPI(M), veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu today said the impartiality of the central agency, probing the Tapasi Malik murder case, was never beyond question.

''The CBI and RAW have always been against us...I have seen during my Chief Ministership that generaly they are not in our favour. I do not say that they should favour us, but they are not neutral either,'' he told reporters after attending the CPI(M) state Secretariat meeting.

Alleging that "there are many considerations that the central agency goes by", the nonagenarian leader said despite its role Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had agreed to a CBI investigation into the case in which Singur zonal Committee Secretary of the CPI(M) had been arrested.

Yesterday, Mr Dutta refused to undergo a polygraph test and told an additional chief metropolitan magistrate that he did not know Tapasi, the 18-year-old land acquisition protester, whose murder he was accused of having plotted.

Dutta was arrested by CBI following interrogation of Debu Malik, a Singur resident and the prime accused in the case.

Though admitting that CBI had also done some "good jobs", Mr Basu said he had doubts whether punishment had been handed out to the guilty in even two per cent of the total cases the investigating agency had probed so far.

He, however, declined to comment in reply to a question whether the CBI arrest of Mr Dutta was politically motivated. ''That I cannot say. CBI will submit a report to the court. The court will do whatever is to be done,'' he said.

However, the CPI(M) has already described the arrest of Dutta as a "political conspiracy" to malign the party.

The party argued that there was no reason for Dutta, who was instrumental in getting consent from the Singur farmers for acquisition of land, to have conspired in the murder of an "insignificant" girl knowing that such an act would land the organisation in trouble.

The CPI(M) also alleged that the fact that Tapasi's body was dragged inside the site of the proposed project which the Left Front Government was backing, indicated at an ill motive.

UNI