Four leaders, including two ministers of the Mamata Banerjee government, were sent to the Presidency Jail in Kolkata on Monday night in the Narada Sting case in West Bengal. The CBI on Monday arrested ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, TMC MLA Madan Mitra and former party leader Shobhan Chatterjee on the day.
The CBI brought these leaders to their offices at the Nizam Palace in Kolkata to interrogate them, where they were arrested.
In the evening, a special CBI court gave interim bail to the four leaders, but the Calcutta High Court stayed the decision at night.
The Division Bench of the High Court issued a stay order on the special court’s decision and directed the accused to be sent to judicial custody till further orders.
News agencies quoted sources as saying that the four leaders were taken to jail under tight security after medical examination on Monday night.
During this time, the family members of the four accused were present outside the jail.
After taking their leaders to the CBI office on Monday, a large number of Trinamool Congress workers and supporters started demonstrating for hours in front of the CBI office.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also went to the CBI office and stayed there for several hours. While leaving the CBI office, he told reporters “the court will decide”.
Party MP Partha Chatterjee has said that Trinamool will challenge the arrest of its leaders in the court.
‘Faith in the judiciary’
According to news agency PTI, Firhad Hakim said outside the Kolkata office of the CBI, “I have full faith in the judiciary. The BJP can employ anyone to harass me.”
According to the agency, he told Runday that he could not work to help the people during the epidemic.
Hakeem also said, “We are bad people, but not Mukul Roy and Shubhendu Adhikari.”
It is worth mentioning that Mukul Roy and Shubhendu Adhikari are also accused in the Narada sting operation but they have not been arrested.
Both these leaders were members of Trinamool Congress during this sting operation but later they joined BJP. Shubhendu Adhikari, who defeated Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram, is the Leader of Opposition in the new assembly while Mukul Roy is the MLA.
At the same time, another arrested minister Subrata Chatterjee said outside the CBI office, we are not robberies. I have not done any such wrong thing that CBI should come to my bedroom and arrest me.
The Narada sting operation was carried out in 2014 by journalist Matthew Samuel of the Narada News portal, in which TMC ministers, MPs and MLAs were seen on camera helping to help fictitious companies.
Question on action after election results
Questions are also being raised about the arrest of the leaders, which took place 15 days after the results of the assembly elections in West Bengal, and the Trinamool Congress is calling it a political vendetta.
The Bharatiya Janata Party had given a big boost to the assembly elections, but despite this, Mamata Banerjee returned to power for the third consecutive time with a strong majority.
The arrested leader Madan Mitra told news agency ANI, “The central government, and mainly both leaders (Modi and Shah) are unable to accept the mandate given to the people of Bengal. The game has started again. ”
Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar recently allowed the CBI to file a charge sheet against these leaders just a few days after the election results came out.
