Siliguri: A murdered gold trader’s family has fled West Bengal out of fear, and the senior state government official they accuse of the crime remains out of custody despite court directions, an arrest warrant, and a Supreme Court order denying him anticipatory bail.The accused is the former Rajganj Block Development Officer Prasanta Barman, whose story essays the remarkable rise of a regional strongman. Barman is named in the abduction and murder of 48-year-old Swapan Kamilya, a gold trader from Balasore in Odisha. Kamila disappeared from Kolkata’s Salt Lake on October 28, 2025. On the morning of October 29, his bloodied body was found by a nearby canal. His family alleges that Barman had earlier visited the shop where Kamilya worked while searching for a stolen gold bar that had been allegedly sold there.Kamilya’s brother, Debashish, told The Wire, “A few days before the murder, the BDO had come to our village, with two cars, looking for my brother.”This style of intimidation, noted Kamilya’s wife, Mamata, gave the family the impression that Barman was extremely powerful. The family lodged the murder complaint at Bidhannagar Police Station fully aware of the fact that it might lead to Barman mobilising his forces against them. “Out of fear, we left our home and have taken shelter in another state. We are scared that he might come looking for us out of a sense of vengeance,” Mamata said.She added that the family were hopeful that a new government in Bengal might ease the way for justice, but there has been no such indication yet. The family’s fear is at the heart of why this case matters beyond West Bengal. Beyond a murder investigation, this raises wider questions about civil-service recruitment, political patronage, police inaction and the effect of court orders on an ecosystem which is more powerful than the judiciary.The case has drawn attention because Barman was not an ordinary accused. He was a serving executive officer of the state government, with access to official vehicles, administrative networks and local power structures. An extraordinary rise Barman, a West Bengal Civil Service officer, is a member of the Rajbanshi community, a politically significant Scheduled Caste community in North Bengal. That he has strong political connections was evident in 2017 when the West Bengal Public Service Commissions declared Barman the topper of the WBCS (Group A) Mains Examination.The 2017 West Bengal Public Service Commission list.But this story soon turned into a recruitment scandal. A response to an RTI which Barman himself had filed and which was widely reported on showed that he had scored only 13 out of 200 in the Preliminary examinations and that he ranked 80,147th – meaning he had not qualified. There were also allegations that he had submitted a blank answer sheet and still entered the Group-A cadre.The RTI answer received by Prasanta Barman showing his score in the prelims.The RTI response notes that Barman was added through a “corrigendum to the list of qualified candidates”.The ‘corrigendum’ issued to pave the way for Barman’s inclusion in the list of candidates who could sit for the Main WBCS exams in 2017.The RTI made news. A total of three public interest litigations were filed in the Calcutta high court against this irregularity, advocate Shamim Ahmad told The Wire. These matters may be heard again next week, he said. That a candidate who allegedly failed at the preliminary stage entered later exercised executive authority as a BDO is one of the most unexplained aspects of Prasanta Barman’s controversial career.Barman served in several postings before becoming BDO of Kalchini and later Rajganj in North Bengal. By 2023, Barman had reportedly grown close to the then ruling party’s leaders in north Bengal. A TMC leader, speaking anonymously, said, “He used to decide who would get tickets for the Panchayat elections in these three districts. Even back then, he had a separate direct line to the top brass.”In Kalchini, local residents and political workers alleged that he lacked administrative knowledge, took erratic decisions and showed political bias. Barman also threatened this reporter in 2023 for a report which mentioned allegations that he played a role in perpetuating electoral malpractices.In Rajganj, he faced allegations of financial corruption and benami contracting. Local contractor Deepak Barman alleged, “No contractor could get any work unless we delivered 40% of the project money to him in advance. In total, he looted hundreds of crores of rupees during his tenure as the Rajganj BDO.”Jalpaiguri TMC leader Tapan Dey told The Wire, “We did not cross him because he had direct links with the top leadership. Even as leaders of the ruling party, we stopped going to the BDO office because of him.”Questions have also been raised over the assets Barman allegedly accumulated in office, including several houses and vehicles across Kolkata, Siliguri and Cooch Behar.Barman has denied wrongdoing to news outlets and claimed he was being targeted because he belongs to a Rajbanshi family.The murder caseThe murder case against Barman had its roots in a gold bar which was allegedly stolen from Barman’s residence. Instead of filing a formal police complaint, Barman allegedly mobilised drivers, aides, contractors and political associates to trace and forcibly question Kamilya.The police’s initial chargesheet named five people, and left Barman out. Among those named were Sajal Sarkar, the TMC leader from Cooch Behar, Gobinda Sarkar, Sajal’s aide, Raju Dhali, who was Barman’s driver in Kolkata, Tufan Thapa, a contractor from north Bengal said to be close to the BDO, and Vivekananda Sarkar, Barman’s former driver. Raju Dhali, Tufan Thapa, Sajal Sarkar, Vivekananda Sarkar and Gobinda Sarkar were arrested. Vivekananda, Barman’s former driver, allegedly told police that Barman was present during the assault and instructed others to use violence.It was only later that Barman’s name was added to the chargesheet.Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a high-ranking official at the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate in North 24 Parganas said, “Pressure was coming from the top brass in various ways to dilute the case, but we, the investigating officers, were desperate to probe this murder. Whether the public will ever know why a BDO was so desperate to kill a poor gold trader, we don’t know.”Another officer of the same police station said photographic evidence had to be preserved separately on external drives because of fears that records could be erased.Bails and police failureLate last year, Barman initially secured anticipatory bail from the Barasat court, but the Calcutta high court cancelled it after Bidhannagar police challenged the order. The high court asked him to surrender in 72 hours. Barman, on December 23, 2025, moved the Supreme Court which directed him to surrender by January 23. He did not.During his time as a fugitive, Barman remained absent from his office in Jalpaiguri. On January 20, 2026, the Jalpaiguri district administration removed Barman as BDO. The Bidhannagar court has issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against him and the Bidhannagar Police has dispatched teams to other states, but Barman has evaded arrest so far.In late May, Barman was caught after a hit-and-run case in New Town, adjoining Kolkata, while driving under the influence. Police had him in custody but reportedly failed to place the outstanding murder-case warrant and Supreme Court-related records before the court. Since traffic-related offences were bailable, he secured bail and was seen walking away free.Senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, who fought one of the 2017-18 PILs in Barman’s WBCS case, said, “The police are simply refusing to arrest an accused BDO. Back then, Mamata Banerjee was the home minister and the police followed her orders. Now, the BJP police minister must be giving the same orders. The police have clearly received a message that this BDO cannot be arrested.”A Calcutta high court-imposed 10-day deadline for the police to arrest Barman expired on June 3, 2026, but the accused former official remains out of custody. The Wire has made attempts to reach Barman for his version of the story but his older phone numbers appear to no longer be in use. When The Wire reached out to the state’s new Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Shankar Ghosh, on June 25, he said that he was not aware of the updates on the incident at all. “The matter is entirely administrative. I have only just heard about it from you,” he said.The unanswered question is how one official became so powerful that he could allegedly enter the civil service despite failing the prelims, build influence across administrations, evade arrest in a murder case and walk free even after the police had him in custody.Translation from the Bengali original and with inputs from Aparna Bhattacharya.