In what could give goose pimples to the Trinamool Congress during election time the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday made certain important observations on the Narada sting saying the incident itself was dangerous for the society and needed investigation at the earliest, the petitioners’ lawyers said. The court ordered the preservation of footages with a nationalised bank.
Showing no leniency to the defendant lawyers’ plea that the hearing be postponed till after the elections the Division Bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur said that the incident had rattled the society at large and that it should be probed at the earliest not only to ascertain the genuineness of the footage but also to fix responsibility of the guilty.
It was disturbing and dangerous even — both ways — even if the footages were genuine or not the Court observed saying either ways the responsibilities had to be fixed and that too at the earliest, senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya quoting the Court said.
The Court which had constituted a three-member team comprising a State IGP, a CBI officer and a High Court officer ordered preservation of the CD and device that were used to film the bribery video with a nationalised bank.
The Narada sting footage had shown at least a dozen Trinamool Congress leaders including MPs, Ministers, MlAs taking money from the sting journalist who posed as a businessman. The bribes anywhere between Rs 5 and 20 lakh were received in lieu of future promises made.
Meanwhile, in what looked like public admission of the guilt senior Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy on Tuesday told an election rally that the leaders who were shown taking money in the sting video had not used a single penny for their own benefit.
“These days some of our leaders are shown in video footages taking money. Our party chief Mamata Banerjee has already ordered an internal inquiry and any one found guilty will be punished. But then we can vouch for the fact that not a single rupees taken has been used for personal benefit and things will be clear once the result of the inquiry is made public,” Roy told a rally at Kalna.
Incidentally Banerjee had also told an election that she would have been more careful in ticket distribution had the footages been made public earlier. This however made the erring leaders most of whom are heavyweight candidates furious and some of them even contacted her over phone expressing their grievances, sources said adding Banerjee was for first time witnessing rebellion in her party ever since she came to power in 2011.