Agartala, March 2 (IANS): Three CPI-M leaders, who were booked and convicted in a case of assaulting a judge in South Tripura district during a nationwide strike called in September 2015, have surrendered before a court and were sent to jail, a defence lawyer said on Sunday. The defence lawyer said that following the instructions of the Supreme Court, the three CPI-M leaders – Tapas Datta, Trilokesh Sinha, and Babul Debnath – surrendered before a local court in Belonia in South Tripura district on Saturday afternoon and it sent them to jail. The next hearing of the case in the apex court would be held on March 18, the lawyer told the media. Datta is currently the CPI-M’s South Tripura district Secretary, while Debnath is the leader of the All India Kishan Sabha and Sinha is a leader of the CPI-M’s trade union body CITU. After the incident on September 2, 2015, the police registered a suo-moto case and launched a probe. Charge sheets were subsequently filed against the three prominent CPI-M leaders. A first-class judicial magistrate in 2022 convicted and imprisoned the Left leaders, who subsequently filed a review petition in the South Tripura District and Sessions Court which, in May 2023, upheld the trial court’s judgment. The three leaders then moved the Tripura High Court, which in July last year, but it also upheld the decision of the district and sessions court to sentence all three to two years rigorous imprisonment for creating a ruckus inside a courtroom and insulting a judge. The three leaders then appealed to the Supreme Court, which asked them to surrender before the trial court first and then it would hear their case. The lawyers of the trio accused pleaded in all the courts that the CPI-M leaders were not guilty.