In a major embarrassment for the Mamata Banerjee Government the Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered a forensic test on the Narada sting footages that showed a host of Trinamool Congress leaders, including MPs and Ministers accepting bribes in lieu of favours from a journalist posing as a businessman.
The Division Bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice Arijit Banerjee ordered the camera and devices with which the videos were shot and the pen drive to be sent to the Central Forensic Science laboratory (CFSl), Hyderabad. The report has to be submitted within four-weeks, the court directed.
The videos were shot with an iPhone and subsequently the sting footages were transferred to a laptop and then to a pen drive. The pen drive and the iPhone had earlier been submitted before the court by Mathew Samuels the CEO of Narada News, a news portal who claimed to have conducted the sting operation.
A three-member team comprising High Court Registrar, an Inspector-General of Police and a CBI officer had been constituted by the court to receive the devices from Samuels. The court ordered the director of the committee to personally hand over the devices to the Director of CFSl who would also personally receive the laptop from Narada CEO as per the court order, lawyers said.
The Trinamool Congress had earlier contended that the footages were doctored, before its lawyers tried to convince the Court that “there is a difference between bribe and donation.” The petitioners seeking a probe into the Narada scam however said that donations were always given against receipt. Furthermore no income tax was return was filed against the amounts purportedly received.
The Court in its part said that the issue was grave both ways. If it were genuine it would affect the society in a big way and even if the tapes were doctored then also it merited strong action, lawyers quoting the Court said.
The Narada issue had played a huge role in the ongoing elections in Bengal with the psephologists like BN Chakrabarty saying: “It has a potential to unseat the Trinamool Government because if found to be true it will only underscore the repeated allegations of corruption like Sharada, TET, Trident and SJDA scams — against the Trinamool leaders.”
