The Central Reserve Police Force on Friday started interrogating residents of two villages after five empty graves were found at Sherkhanchowk in the Communist Party of India-Marxist stronghold of Khejuri, adjacent to Nandigram [Images], in West Bengal.

Assistant commandant Arindam Mukhopadhyay, chief of CRPF's Gokul Nagar camp, visited the graves and posted a team of 10 to 12 personnel there to question the people of Sherkhanchowk village and adjacent Pankhai.

The CRPF has been questioning the villagers on the identity of the missing bodies, how they had disappeared, who had dug up the graves, and whether the land was used as a graveyard earlier, CRPF sources said.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamta Banerjee had claimed on Thursday in Midnapur that the police carried five bodies from Khejury to Kolkata for post-mortem the previous night.

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Three new graves had also been found at Mansinghber, in Khejuri, on Thursday. These graves could be of women as torn pieces of sari and bits of bangles and a necklace were found.

A PTI correspondent, who visited Sherkhanchowk on Thursday, had seen burnt wood and portions of bicycle tyres lying around the shallow graves.

Villagers alleged that five bodies of CPI-M workers, killed while making bombs on October 28, were burnt at the spot and buried for a night, before being taken away.

Nineteen CPI-M supporters had been killed while making bombs on October 28, they claimed.

Earlier on December 6, human bones had been unearthed by the CRPF from five graves at Bidyapith village in Khejuri.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had also recovered bones from Talpati canal at Bhangabera in Nandigram.