Hours after CBI arrests of four Trinamool Congress affiliates, including two ministers, in the Narada bribery case, city court granted interim bail.
A bench led by Justice Anupam Mukherjee granted bail to Madan Mitra, Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee and former TMC MLA Sovan Chatterjee against Rs 50,000 personal bond.
What is the Narada case?
The Narada sting operation was conducted by Narada news founder Mathew Samuel for over two years in West Bengal. Conducted in 2014 for the news magazine Tehelka, it was published on a private news website Narada News months before the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections. Samuel is the former managing editor of Tehelka.
As part of the operation, Samuel formed a fictitious company named Impex Consultancy Solutions and approached several TMC ministers, MPs and leaders, asking them for favours in return for money.
In the 52-hour footage photographed by Samuel and his colleague Angel Abraham, then TMC MPs Mukul Roy, Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Prasun Bannerjee, Suvendu Adhikari, Aparupa Poddar and Sultan Ahmad (he died in 2017), and state ministers Madan Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim and Iqbal Ahmed were seen accepting alleged bribes in the form of wads of cash in exchange for extending unofficial favours for Impex Consultancy Solutions, which was floated by Samuel himself.
Blatant abuse of prosecutorial progresses: TMC leader Ashwani Kumar
Strongly opposing the arrest of TMC leaders by the CBI on Monday in the Narada scam, senior Congress leader and former Union Law Minister Ashwani Kumar said the move is a blatant abuse of prosecutorial processes.
Speaking to ANI, Kumar said, “The imprint of partisan politics is writ large in the blatant abuse of prosecutorial processes by the CBI against political adversaries of the ruling BJP. Resort to arbitrary criminal prosecution and custody of the accused by enforcement agencies to deprive citizens of their fundamental liberties is clearly against the first principles of our libertarian constitution. Detention of the accused militates against recent judgments of the Supreme Court that scoff at routine incarceration of political activists.”
Arrest me or release the ministers, Mamata Banerjee asked CBI:
The chief minister asked the CBI to either “arrest her or release the ministers”.
The chief minister stayed at the CBI’s office for around six hours and left the premises at 4.40 pm. Mamata appeared to be calm when she finally left; she didn’t address the media or make any comments while leaving.
Trinamool MP and senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, however, told ThePrint that the CBI action was “illegal”.
“The CBI cannot arrest them without the approval of the Bidhan Sabha Speaker. Why are they not arresting Suvendu Adhikari [former Trimaool Member and current BJP MLA]? BJP is frustrated as they were rejected by the people of Bengal. We will fight it out legally,” he said.
