CIF personnel asked to proceed on 15-day leave to ease tension

Counter Insurgency Force (CIF) jawans were today asked to leave an Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) camp in West Bengal in view of tension between their warring personnel.

The CIF men have been sent on a 15-day leave and subsequently moved to the Midnapore Police Lines, police said.

Allegations of molestation were levelled against the CIF personnel and their barracks at Salua were set on fire by villagers.

The top brass of CIF, the para-military Eastern Frontier Rifles which is also headquartered at Salua, and the police suggested winding up of the barracks altogether, they said.

EFR personnel yesterday took away four CIF personnel and beat up others in their barracks which was set on fire by villagers.

"The state government has decided to relocate the CIF camp. The site will be finalised soon," Chief Secretary Samar Ghosh told reporters in Kolkata.

Eight vehicles in the CIF barracks damaged in the fire were shifted to Kharagpur in the district.

The CIF camp was taken over by the police led by SDPO Dipak Sarkar.

Yesterday villagers blocked the Keshiary-Kharagpur state highway demanding handing over of a CIF man accused of molesting a girl, said to be the daughter of an EFR jawan, on Tuesday night when she was returning home from tuition.

Earlier on February 24, 20 CIF men were injured in a clash with EFR. The EFR had alleged that a CIF man had misbehaved with women at a fair in the area.

The anti-Maoist CIF was set up last year on the lines of the Greyhounds in Andhra Pradesh.