A Bidhannagar court on Friday remanded rebel Trinamool Congress MP Kunal Ghosh to a two-week judicial custody but not granted him the permission for making secret statements before a Judicial Magistrate.
He was earlier arrested by police for his alleged connections with ponzi kingpin Sudipto Sen.
In what could provide Bengal Opposition legal grounds for demanding investigation against top ruling party leaders including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and some of her Cabinet colleagues in the Saradha chit fund scam Ghosh was on Friday permitted to get his statements recorded under Section 164 of the CrPc, lawyers said.
The police had arrested Ghosh on November 23 after 12 rounds of interrogations since April this year. Curiously he was questioned only once between April and September 23. But he was grilled 11 times in a span of two months after he made some public observations against the top Trinamool leadership vis a vis Saradha scam. He has been charged under Sections 420, 406 and 120B of the IPC.
The Friday’s developments also come close on the heels of a pre-taped interview of Ghosh claiming close association of Banerjee and her senior party leaders with jailed Saradha chief Sudipto Sen.
While the police had earlier dismissed the taped statements aired by a Bangla television channel as legally insignificant, his statements before a judicial magistrate under Section 164 would certainly tie the hands of the investigators, lawyers maintained.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister came back hard against the Opposition Marxists asking them to “keep your mouths shut as you are the root of all anomalies in Bengal.” Banerjee who spoke both in the State Assembly and a Trinamool party meeting said “the Marxists made a mess a in West Bengal which will take 50 years to clean so you should plaster your mouths for another 10 years.”
On the other hand, the left resorted to day-long protest movements and gheraoed police stations in Kolkata protesting Thursday’s alleged manhandling of its senior politicians and renowned academics who had carried a deputation to the Bidhannagar police station demanding interrogation of the Chief Minister.
“The Government is gagging the voice of protests in Bengal” said CPI(M) State secretary Biman Bose while Opposition leader Suryakanto Mishra alleged “neither the CM nor her Cabinet colleagues bother to answer questions. We have placed more than 250 questions to the Chief Minister without getting a single reply. To avoid taking questions she shrinks the Assembly sessions to a matter of a week or two.”
The Congress also raised its pitch by marching to the Governor’s House demanding a CBI probe into the scam.