KOLKATA, Jan 31: A senior US diplomat on Thursday ruled out an independent probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the attack outside an American cultural center in Kolkata this month.
“There is no possibility of the FBI investigating the attack on the American Center,” US Consul-General in Kolkata, Christopher Sandrolini, told reporters.
“We have full faith in the Indian government and the government of West Bengal state is investigating the case with due importance,” he said.
On Jan 22 gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on policemen who were changing shift outside the building, killing four of them, before escaping.
The death toll rose to five Thursday when Asraf Ali, 28, who had been critically wounded in the shooting, died in hospital.
Sandrolini said it was not certain whether the target of the attack was the US facility or the policemen guarding it.
“We are not sure who were the targets of the attack — whether the police or the American Center.”
Two FBI agents had flown to Kolkata following the attack but they returned to New Delhi after consultations with local detectives.
Two Pakistani nationals who allegedly carried out the attack were shot and killed on Sunday by policemen in the eastern state of Jharkhand.
Another suspect, Jalaluddin Nasir, an Indian national, was arrested in Kolkata on Wednesday and charged with supplying the motorcycle used by the two gunmen and of sheltering them at his house.
WEST BENGAL CM: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya reiterated a charge that Pakistan’s military intelligence, the ISI, had a hand in terror attacks in India, including in the American Centre raid.
“The ISI is helping militant outfits in this region or else how one would explain the presence of weapons in the hands of KLO activists in West Bengal?” Bhattacharya told a political rally in neighbouring Assam state.
West Bengal suspects guerrillas linked to an organisation known as the KLO are behind smuggling weapons from across the border to arm outlawed Maoist rebels in India’s eastern and southern states.—AFP
