West Bengal: CBI Arrests 3 Top 3 Leaders, Including Ministers, in Narada Bribery Case

In a blow to the newly elected Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal, around 200 jawans of central forces led by Anti-Corruption Bureau officers on Monday morning went to the houses of cabinet ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, MLA Madan Mitra and former mayor Sovan Chatterjee and took them into custody in the Narada bribery case.

In 2016, the Narada tapes surfaced where Firhad Hakim, Mukul Roy (now with the Bharatiya Janata Party), Saugata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Sultan Ahmed, Subrata Mukherjee, Suvendu Adhikari (now with BJP), Sovan Chatterjee (who joined BJP and then quit), Aparupa Poddar, Madan Mitra, Iqbal Ahmed, Prasun Banerjee and HMS Mirza were seen taking bribes from Narada News owner and reporter Mathew Samuels. The CEO of Narada News portal, through a fake Aadhaar ID card in the name of Santosh Sankaran, made them believe that he was a bigshot businessman willing to set up industry in West Bengal.

In the latest development, the  state ministers and TMC leaders are going to be produced by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the special designated Bankshal Court in virtual mode even as loyalists of CM Banerjee  raised uproar in Kolkata regarding the arrests. The CBI will also file a charge sheet against them.

Out of the four influential persons arrested by the CBI on Monday is senior most TMC minster and the second senior most in the party leadership -- Subrata Mukherjee. There is also Cabinet Minister of Urban Development and Municipal Affairs, Firhad Hakim, who is considered the most trusted lieutenant of the Chief Minister at present.

The TMC has claimed the arrests were part of BJP’s 'politics of vendetta', according to party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh. BJP, however, has claimed this to be a regular course of law that is happening at a time when lakhs of their organisation’s workers are homeless.

On hearing the news, the Chief Minister took her cavalcade to the CBI office at Nizam Palace in Kolkata and started a dharna. She reportedly also spoke with Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Akhilesh Singh and was furious. “I have heard CM Mamata Banerjee telling officials that there is no rule that allows one to arrest state officials without the Speaker’s and the state government’s permission. (She said) ‘You have to arrest me if you arrest my officials’,” advocate Anindo Raut told mediapersons.

According to sources in CBI, the central agency sought permission of their arrest from Governor Jagdeep Dhankar and got a nod on May 7. The CBI has said that in case of TMC to BJP turncoats like Mukul Roy (now a BJP MLA ) and Suvendu Adhikari (now Leader of the Opposition ), who were both MPs at the time of the incident, the sanction from the Speaker of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson is awaited to start preparing a  charge sheet for them as well.

On March 17, 2017, the Calcutta High Court ordered that a preliminary probe will be conducted into the case by the CBI. The court also directed the CBI to register an FIR (first information report) against others involved in the case, if required. On April 17 that year, CBI filed a charge sheet against the13 TMC leaders and other party functionaries, booking them under Section 120 B of the Indian Penal Code (criminal conspiracy), Section 13 (2), 13 (1D) and Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Tension was palpable in and around Kolkata as hundreds of TMC workers, infuriated by the arrests, barricaded  the AJC Bose Road before the CBI office, defying the lockdown norms.

It may be recalled that doubts had been raised in section of the media on whether the Governor has the power to sanction such arrest requests on his own without the permission of the council of ministers. Assembly Speaker Biman Bandhyapadhya has condemned the arrests saying that no permission has been sought from his office regarding the arrest of the three MLAs, of whom two are current ministers.