Submit report, orders Calcutta HC after Suvendu Adhikari aide arrested again – Hindustan Times

KOLKATA: A two-judge bench of the Calcutta high court asked the West Bengal government to submit a report on the arrest of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari’s aide, Rakhal Bera, after a judge granted him bail and barred the police from arresting him again without the court’s permission, Bera’s lawyer Lokenath Chatterjee said on Tuesday.

Justice Rajasekhar Mantha on Monday granted bail to Rakhal Bera and shielded him from arrests by the police on the ground that he had been repeatedly arrested in new cases after getting bail in other cases.

“The state is once again directed to submit a list of all cases pending against the petitioner anywhere in the state. This court is also inclined to direct that all police stations in the state may register any FIR against the petitioner but he shall not be arrested without the express leave of this court,” Justice Mantha ordered.

On Tuesday, the West Bengal government approached the two-judge bench challenging the immunity from arrest granted by Justice Mantha.

The division bench comprising justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Subhasis Dasgupta was hearing the case, Chatterjee said, when “the court was informed that instead of being released from jail, Rakhal Bera had been shown as arrested in connection with another case registered at Nandakumar police station in East Midnapore district on June 16. We told the division bench that the arrest is illegal, especially after the court holding (on Monday) that the cases were politically motivated,” said Bera’s lawyer said.

Chatterjee said the division bench asked the state government to submit a report on Wednesday to ascertain why Bera was arrested again.

Rakhal Bera, an aide of Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the Bengal legislative assembly, was arrested by the Kolkata Police on June 7 in a job scam case filed in East Midnapore district.

In this case, Bera, a resident of East Midnapore, has been accused of taking ₹2 lakh from a man in 2018-19 by promising a job in the irrigation department that Adhikari headed at that time. Adhikari joined the BJP in December last year.

Four cases were registered against Bera in East Midnapore in June and the fifth one was registered at the Manicktala police station in Kolkata on July 1.

In his order on Monday, justice Mantha said the Bera was being punished by the ruling dispensation for changing his political affiliation and for being close to the present leader of the opposition by foisting false cases against him.

“There appears to be a pattern being followed by police in coordination with one another in attempting to keep the petitioner in custody by hook or crook on one pretext or the other and by registering one FIR after the other,” the judge said in his order. HT has seen a copy of the order.