The Kolkata Police is preparing to summon senior IPS officer SMH Mirza to investigate his alleged links in the Narada sting case. A summon is likely to be issued to him in a week’s time, sources said.
Mirza, currently a commandant of State Armed Police and a former SP of Burdwan, was seen in the Narada video tape accepting cash — allegedly for future promises — from a journalist posing as a prospective investor.
The journalist subsequently went on to sting a host of Trinamool Congress leaders including MPs and Ministers , leaving the Bengal ruling party extremely embarrassed during the recently-concludedelections.
Sources in the Kolkata Police claim to have found some new inputs in the case after scrutinising phone call records of the said journalist and Mirza. The police want to question Mirza in this regard and on many other issues , including “how he came into touch with this journalist,” sources maintained. “It has to be ascertained whether more people were involved in the sting operation.”
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had soon , after coming back to power for the second time, announced a probe into the alleged Narada bribery case, saying that the Government wanted to know the faces that were behind this conspiracy (to frame the Trinamool Congress leaders).
“There was a conspiracy to malign my Government and the party and we want to know the people behind this conspiracy and a police investigation will be ordered into the so-called sting case,” she had said, constituting a Special Investigation Team under Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar.
Narada CEO Mathew Samuels, however, has claimed that he had shot the video in a purely professional and journalistic venture and had no political interest to serve.
Meanwhile, Opposition parties, including the left, Congress and the BJP have questioned the propriety of the probe order, as the case was already being heard in Calcutta High Court, where a Public Interest litigation was filed in the month of April, seeking a CBI investigationin to the expose.
The Court, which had earlier ordered the video tapes to be sent to CFSl Hyderabad for checking their veracity, has redirected them to be sent to the CFSl Chandigarh, after the Hyderabad centre informed that it lacked the technological expertise to examine films shot with I-phone.
The High Court had anyway said that notwithstanding probe orders issued by any authority, its decision would be final.