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Narada sting: Bench to not assemble today, ministers may spend another night in jail
Cabinet ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, TMC legislator Madan Mitra, and former mayor Sovan Chatterjee, who were arrested by the CBI on Monday, have spent three nights in judicial custody
Four heavyweight leaders, including two cabinet ministers, who were arrested by the CBI in connection with the 2016 Narada sting operation case on Monday, may have to spend another night in jail custody, as the first division bench of the Calcutta high court was unable to assembly on Thursday to hear their bail plea.
“Due to unavoidable circumstances the first division bench didn’t assembly today. The case could not be heard by the bench,” said an advocate who is also a TMC leader.
The division bench of acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Arijit Banerjee was supposed to hear the case today. The bench heard the bail pleas of the arrested leaders on Wednesday for around two hours. The hearing, however, didn’t end and the court decided to hear it again on Thursday.
Cabinet ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, TMC legislator Madan Mitra, and former mayor Sovan Chatterjee, who were arrested by the CBI on Monday, have spent three nights in judicial custody after the high court stayed the interim bail granted to them by a special CBI court.
The CBI had opposed the bail of the leaders on the ground that they can influence the witnesses and investigation, and has also sought transfer of the trial of the case.
Wednesday saw a pitched courtroom battle with senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Siddharth Luthra and Kalyan Banerjee, who also happens to be a TMC MP, pleading for the arrested leaders. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the CBI, opposed the bail.
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Even though the leaders were sent to judicial custody, they all had to be admitted in hospitals after their complaint of illness on Tuesday. While Hakim is admitted in the hospital of Presidency Correctional Home, the rest were admitted to the state-run SSKM hospital.
“They (four leaders) are not in jail. They are in hospital. They should be in jail. That is my case,” Mehta told the court
The SSKM hospital authorities have set up a medical board for their treatment. Hakim, who was suffering from fever, tested negative for Covid-19.
Singhvi, however, argued that the CBI was trying to keep the leaders in jail for a few more days “by hook or crook, more by hook than crook”. “All the accused are in hospital. Where can they run away?” Singhvi asked, while seeking bail.
The case pertains to a two-year-long sting operation whose videos were uploaded months ahead of the 2016 assembly elections. The sting operation, conducted by online news portal Narada News, purportedly caught several senior TMC leaders accepting money in exchange for alleged favours to a fictitious company.
On Monday, soon after the arrests, chief minister Mamata Banerjee staged a dharna at the CBI’s office in Kolkata, while state law minister had led nearly 3,000 TMC workers and supporters to the court premises. Outside the CBI’s office in south Kolkata, hundreds of TMC supporters staged a protest hurling bricks, bottles and shoes at the central forces.
“I don’t think anywhere else in the country such shocking incidents have happened where a premier investigating agency, which has been entrusted with the investigation by this court, is stopped from doing its job,” Mehta told the court.
In response, Singhvi described the chief minister’s dharna at the agency’s office for six hours as a ”Gandhian way of protest” without any exhortation of violence.
Meanwhile, the CBI on Wednesday named Mamata Banerjee, law minister Moloy Ghatak and senior lawmaker Kalyan Banerjee as respondents in its plea to transfer the case out of the state, claiming violent protests orchestrated by Trinamool Congress hampered its probe and intimidated lower courts.
