The country’s top anti-terror agency NIA has strongly refuted allegations of assaulting residents in West Bengal’s Bhupatinagar, where its team had gone as part of its searches into a blast case that killed three people in December 2022.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a statement said its team came under “violent attack by an unruly mob” when they had gone to conduct searches in Naruabila village.

“The attack was completely unprovoked and uncalled-for, and an attempt to obstruct NIA from carrying out its lawful duties,” the NIA said.

It said the searches were conducted at five locations in the presence of independent witnesses, and under the security cover provided by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), which included women constables.

The NIA had eventually arrested two key conspirators in connection with the bomb blast case in East Midnapore district. They were arrested following all lawful procedures, the NIA said.

The attack on the NIA team while they were arresting Balai Charan Maity and Manobrata Jana was aimed at stopping the team from reaching the Bhupatinagar police station to complete the arrest formalities.

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee alleged the NIA was working for the BJP.

“Why did they raid at midnight? Did they have police permission? Locals reacted in the way they would have if any other stranger had visited the place at midnight. Why are they arresting people right before the elections? What does the BJP think, that they will arrest every booth agent? What right does NIA have? They are doing all these to support the BJP. We call upon the entire world to fight against this BJP’s dirty politics,” Ms Banerjee said.

The Bengal Chief Minister accused NIA personnel of assaulting residents in Bhupatinagar rather than the villagers initiating the attack.

The NIA in its statement, alluding to Ms Banerjee’s allegations, said an aggressive crowd had assaulted the NIA personnel who were taking the accused to the police station. “One NIA officer was injured and an official vehicle was damaged in the attack. The NIA has filed a police complaint seeking legal action against the assailants,” the anti-terror agency said.

Manobrata Jana and Bailicharan Maity had failed to appear before the NIA despite repeated summons. The NIA then filed an application before a special NIA court in Kolkata, which on April 3 in an order said the allegations were of very serious nature.

The special court had also said the NIA was “at liberty to proceed with the investigation as expeditiously as possible, and to take all necessary action with regard to arrest, search and seizure of the houses of the suspects/accused persons, in accordance with the relevant provisions of Criminal Code of Procedure, NIA Act and UA(P)A so far applicable for a proper and thorough investigation.”

Vistara on Sunday said it is scaling back its operations by 25-30 flights per day to ease the pressure on pilots, underlining that the airline, hit by delays, has improved its on-time performance over the last few days.

The announcement comes a day after the crisis-hit airline’s CEO said that 98% of its pilots have signed the new contracts with the revised salary structure which had led to several of them calling in sick and causing flight cancellations.

The airline has stressed that the cancellations were done mostly in the domestic network and much ahead of time to minimize inconvenience to the passengers.

“We are carefully scaling back our operations by around 25-30 flights per day, i.e. roughly 10% of the capacity we were operating. This will take us back to the same level of flight operations as at the end of February 2024, and provide the much-needed resilience and buffer in the rosters,” said an airline spokesperson.

“In line with what we had said earlier, with this all the changes for the month of April 2024 have been done and the situation has already gotten better with our on-time performance improving for the last few days. Looking ahead, we are hopeful of stable operations for the rest of the month and beyond,” the spokesperson added.

In recent weeks, discontentment has been simmering among pilots at Vistara, which is in the process of getting merged with Air India, following the new contracts wherein there are concerns that fixed pay component is getting reduced and there is more flying-linked incentive in the salary structure.

Over the weekend of March 31 to April 1, the full service carrier experienced severe operational disruptions and numerous flights were cancelled. Earlier this week, aviation regulator DGCA asked the airline to submit a daily report on flight cancellations and delays.  

The civil aviation ministry is also monitoring the situation of flight cancellations at Vistara, which saw resignations of at least 15 senior first officers in the recent past.

The airline maintains that it is addressing the issue on a “war footing”.

Vistara, a joint venture between Tatas and Singapore Airlines, has 6,500 staff, including 1,000 pilots and 2,500 cabin crew.

As per the summer schedule, which started from March 31, the airline is to operate a little over 300 flights daily. It has around 800 pilots.  

NIA faced accusations of attacking locals in East Medinipur during a crude bomb investigation. The agency denied the allegations, emphasizing lawful actions in the Bhupathinagar blast case probe, leading to arrests and legal complaints.