Team Rajeev 'Saradha' Kumar in action

Kinsuk Basu Additional reporting by Pronab Mondal, TT,Ranaghat, March 20: Either the savages who broke into the convent were too primitive (or too smart) or Rajeev "Saradha" Kumar was too modern.

Bengal's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has pasted the images of the suspects of the Ranaghat attack on the walls in the neighbourhood and is approaching groups of citizens near the border with the question whether the pictures ring a bell.

The elementary tools of crime investigation were deployed today - almost a week after an elderly nun was raped and lakhs robbed from the Convent of Jesus and Mary High School in the early hours of March 14.

In between, the CID had been trying to retrace the digital footprints of the suspects through their mobile phones, considered a modern-day must-have for criminals as well as crime-busters.

Turns out the Ranaghat suspects did not use mobile phones to communicate with one another or with other accomplices positioned elsewhere.

At least that is what the CID investigation revolving around the cellular phone towers in the vicinity of the school has suggested so far.

Reliance on technology cannot be criticised but in the Ranaghat neighbourhoods today some residents asked an obvious question: why did the CID wait for so long to undertake the age-old police legwork?

"Isn't it a bit late to be proactive?" asked a teacher, referring to the flurry of activity today. The teacher did not want to be named, especially since the Mamata Banerjee government has lodged a case against the blockade of the chief minister on Monday.

The question inevitably led to the next one: were the culprits given an undeclared safe passage while the police concentrated on the cellphone towers?

As of now, such questions are little more than speculation but the inability of the police to make any breakthrough in the case so far is slowly fuelling conspiracy theories.

One resident wondered whether the initial probe has thrown up some uncomfortable leads and the establishment is keen to sweep them under the carpet to avoid potential controversies.

Such speculation is feeding on the record of the government in probing the Saradha scandal.

The CID is headed by additional director-general Kumar, an officer hand-picked by the Mamata government for the post. Kumar is considered tech savvy and the electronic surveillance under his leadership is said to be one of the key factors that broke the back of the Maoist guerrilla network in Bengal.

However, Kumar is now known more for his innings as Bidhannagar police commissioner when investigations into the Saradha scandal had mysteriously steered clear of the doorstep of political heavyweights.

In a coincidence, the senior-most police officer in Nadia now - SP Arnab Ghosh - had also served under Kumar in Bidhannagar when a special investigation team of Bengal police was probing the Saradha scandal.

Another coincidence: the CBI, which is now probing the Saradha scandal, is being nudged to take up the Ranaghat investigation as well.

Today, the night guard of the Ranaghat school was brought to the CID headquarters in Alipore for interrogation as part of the heightened activity by the state agency.

After pasting the images of the suspects at Ranaghat railway station, CID sleuths fanned out to Bongaon, a pocket in North 24-Parganas bordering Bangladesh, and Gede, the last stop on the Indo-Bangla border in Nadia district.

Sources said that the team members were carrying photographs of the suspects and their plan was to ask residents if they had spotted anyone with similar facial structures.

"It is still not clear why we didn't start focusing on these places by tracking early morning trains from Ranaghat. The initial days were more about collecting information about history sheeters in Ranaghat and adjoining districts of Murshidabad and North 24-Parganas," said a CID officer based in Calcutta.

For the past two days, a separate team has been trying to find out whether outsiders had been visiting or had settled down in the area recently.

"Two officers came late in the evening asking if anyone from Uttar Pradesh had recently taken any house on rent in our locality," said a resident of Don Bosco Para near the school.

"But there is a general feeling that all these efforts started a bit late.... A lot of people are asking whether there was an attempt to let the accused run away," the resident said.

Some sleuths admitted that valuable time was lost on the first day and no effort was made to question vegetable vendors - who leave early from Ranaghat and take trains for Bongaon and Gede - on whether they had spotted the gang.

"We might have just paved the way for the safe exit of the gang by turning up around 1.40pm, some seven hours after the police in Gangnapur police station first came to learn of the incident," said a CID officer.

At the CID headquarters, Jayanta Raj, the night guard, was questioned for around eight hours over alleged discrepancies between some elements of his account and the scenes on the CCTV footage. He was questioned in Ranaghat, too, yesterday.