Two other Communist Party of India-Marxist leaders, Amiya Sahoo and Ashok Guria, arrested along with Seth were also remanded to CID custody for as many days by the sub-divisional judicial magistrate, Haldia Sarbani Basu Mallick.
Some Trinamool Congress supporters and villagers from Nandigram demonstrated in the court premises, where the authorities had clamped Section 144 under CrPC anticipating violence, earlier in the day demanding capital punishment for Seth.
A Haldia court had, on February 27, issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Seth, whose name figured in the chargesheet filed by the CID against 87 people for alleged involvement in the death of six persons and disappearance of seven others during the turbulence.
The CID brought charges under the Arms Act, criminal conspiracy, forgery and cheating against the three. Seth had been on the run ever since the CID filed the chargesheet on January 30, 2012, before the Haldia sub-divisional court naming the former CPI-M MP and 87 other local CPI-M leaders of Nandigram and adjoining Khejuri blocks.
Seth had allegedly led a group of party men to 'recapture' the area which had switched loyalty to the Trinamool Congress after the March 14, 2007 killing of 14 people there in police firing.
The CID brought charges under the Arms Act, criminal conspiracy, forgery and cheating against the three. He was first said to have fled to Hyderabad and then from there to Maharashtra.
After former CPI-M minister Sushanta Ghosh, he is the second big leader of the party to be held in a criminal case since the Trinamool Congress assumed power.
Seth's role as chairman of the Haldia Development authority and his decision to float a non-government organisation also generated controversy.
The NGO concerned had got land from the HDA almost for free, and Seth had set up a medical college and a dental college on it.
