Arrested netas stay in custody, Calcutta HC to hear case again today – Times of India

KOLKATA: Ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee and former ministers Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee remained in custody for at least one more night as the Calcutta High Court, after a two-and-a-half-hour hearing on Wednesday, decided to take up their bail pleas and related issues for hearing again on Thursday.
The CBI named Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and law minister Moloy Ghatak as parties in their plea for transferring the case out of Bengal and the counsel for the arre-sted politicians accused the agency of saying “half-truths” in court, which was without “precedence in post-Independence India”.

The CBI interpreted the CM and the state law minister’s presence at the CBI’s eastern zone headquarters and the court complex on Monday as an attempt to “influence the probe”. Not so, said the defence, explaining that the act was to “extend support and sympathy” to her senior cabinet colleagues.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta started his arguments around 2 pm after the division bench of acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Arijit Banerjee convened virtually. Mehta’s arguments followed the formal CBI plea in court, seeking to transfer the Narada case outside Bengal. “A clear, cogent and forceful attempt” was made by CM Banerjee and other state functionaries “to overreach, impede and intimidate the judicial system and due process of law”, he said, submitting photographs and other documents to support the CBI claim.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who appeared for the arrested politicians, argued that staying their bail order without even giving them a hearing denied them “natural justice”. He also accused the CBI of saying half-truths in court, like “Aswathama Hata…” in the Mahabharata, as it wanted these leaders in custody at any cost.
Justice Banerjee intervened at this point, saying Monday’s HC stay order followed a specific allegation of a judicial order being given under pressure. Singhvi countered this by saying the CBI special judge did not mention any such thing in his order.
Justice Banerjee then asked Mehta a few specific questions: whether the four arrested politicians had ever refused to cooperate with the CBI, which necessitated their arrest during a pandemic; and whether arrests were needed when charge sheets had already been filed? Mehta said he had got a copy of the plea by the four arrested politicians only on Wednesday morning and needed time till Thursday to respond formally. That the arrested could not be produced in court physically was something “unheard of”, he added.
Acting CJ Bindal then asked Singhvi why the CM and the state law minister had to go to the CBI office and the court, to which Singhvi replied that it was to support her party colleagues and democratically protest against the CBI’s action. “No one was stopped from functioning. It was the CBI that asked for a virtual hearing,” he said, adding that people were bound to gather when “senior public figures” with mass following were picked up in a five-year-old case. Singhvi also referred to mass protests and gatherings after film stars Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan were arrested and mentioned that the CBI special court judge never complained of any pressure.
Acting CJ Bindal then asked how he could explain the CM’s presence at the CBI office for six hours. “It is a Gandhian way of protest,” Singhvi responded, prompting the judge to ask: “Stone-pelting too? So these legal issues can be settled on the streets?”
The CBI alleged that CM Banerjee entered the CBI office at 10.50 a.m. and “went straight to the room where the arrested were sitting”. “She started shouting that you also arrest me,” the agency alleged in its petition.