In what the BJP leadership saw a diabolic design of the Trinamool Congress to falsely implicate the party in scams, two Kolkata Police officials were on Monday arrested for trying to bribe Rahul Sinha a former State BJP president.
The police administration, which swiftly acted by suspending the accused officials and taking them off the media glare, remained tight-lipped about the incident. The accused include ASI Subhasis Roychowdhury and constable, Imanul Rehman of the Kolkata Police Special Branch.
Sinha, a BJP national secretary promptly linked the botched bribery attempt to the Narada expose saying it was a counter-measure hatched by the Trinamool Congress to frame saffron leaders and neutralise the impact of Narada sting operation. “All these because we had been very vocal on Narada,” he said.
“These two persons first came to my residence where my personal assistant asked them to come to the party office. At the party office they initially concealed their identity. Posing as visitors from Murshidabad they insisted on seeing me for organisational reasons,” Sinha said.
“As the appointment was granted they told me that they were in fact businessmen who needed my help. Then they proposed huge amount as bribe to help them smuggle cows across to Bangladesh,” Sinha said, adding he promptly “caught them by their collars and pulled them out of my office where the party men rounded them up before handing them over to the police.”
The persons were carrying a bag which was also handed over to the police. “We did not search the bag and gave it to the police as it was,” he said.
About a dozen Trinamool leaders -- including MPs and Ministers were seen on a video accepting bribe and promising favours to a journalist who met them posing as a businessman.
Alleging that “this was clearly a ploy to implicate me and the BJP in bribery scam through a counter-sting operation of the Narada expose”, Sinha said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee under whom the Police administration worked “should immediately give a statement that she has master-minded this dirty game.”
Sinha who is contesting from Jorasanko Assembly constituency in North Kolkata, the identity of the two officials were only exposed after they were handed over to the police.
“They did not disclose their real identity to us. When they saw that things were going out of hand they revealed everything to the officer in-charge of the Jorasanko Police Station,” he said, adding “two low-rank officials cannot hatch a conspiracy like this. There has to be some big fish that has hatched the plot and pulled the strings from behind.”
Sinha demanded a CBI investigation into the incident saying how “the Government and the ruling party are using the police to suppress the Opposition parties.”
Incidentally the Kolkata Port Chairman was recently arrested by the Special Branch from a star hotel while he was allegedly taking bribe. “The plan that was hatched by the SB while arresting the Port chairman resembles the incident that took place today,” Sinha said.
Meanwhile, Trinamool leadership denied involvement with the Monday’s incident. “Today the situation is such that the Trinamool will be implicated for whatever thing happens anywhere on this earth” Partho Chatterjee senior State Minister said.