CBI arrests two TMC Ministers, MLA, ex-TMC leader in Narada sting case
   Date :18-May-2021

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KOLKATA/NEW DELHI :
 
All the four Ministers get bail in the case TMC supporters hurled stones and bricks at security personnel after the arrests. The agitators also burnt tyres and blocked roads in several other parts of the State 
 
THE CBI on Monday arrested three TMC leaders and a former party leader in connection with the Narada sting case, wherein politicians were purportedly caught taking money on camera, and will file a chargesheet against them and another accused, officials said.
 
A special CBI court later on Monday granted bail to all the four Ministers in the case. The central agency arrested State Ministers Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, TMC MLA Madan Mitra as well as former Minister Sovan Chatterjee in Kolkata in connection with the case on Monday morning, they said. All four of them were Ministers during the time of the alleged commission of the offence in 2014, they said. IPS officer SMH Meerza, who is out on bail, is the fifth accused in the case. Soon after the Central Bureau of Investigation made the arrests, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee reached the agency’s Nizam Palace office in Kolkata demanding the release of the TMC leaders, reminiscent of her protest against the CBI’s move to question the then Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in 2019. High voltage political drama was enacted here on Monday as TMC supporters held demonstrations defying lockdown norms in various places, while Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee offered to court arrest protesting detention of two West Bengal Ministers in the Narada case by CBI. Banerjee who sat in ‘dharna for a few hours, later left Nizam Palace, while her nephew and party leader Abhishek Banerjee advised party supporters to abide by the law and not to break lockdown norms.
 
West Bengal has gone into a 15-day lockdown from Sunday to tackle a rising surge in Corona cases. Apart from the CM, Chatterjee’s estranged wife Ratna, who is now an MLA from Behala Purba, Hakim’s daughter and other senior leaders of the Trinamool Congress also reached the CBI office. Reacting to the arrests, TMC spokesman Kunal Ghosh claimed that the CBI action was a vengeful act and a fallout of the BJP’s loss in the West Bengal assembly elections. TMC party supporters raised slogans against the BJP-led NDA Government, and hurled stones and bricks at security personnel outside Nizam Palace, which houses the Central Bureau of Investigation offices here, protesting the arrests. The agitators also burnt tyres and blocked roads in several other parts of the State, including Hooghly, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts. CBI sources said Banerjee’s actions are akin to interference in the probe handed over to the agency by the Calcutta High Court.
 
“The CBI has today arrested four then (former) Ministers, Government of West Bengal in a case related to the Narada sting operation... it was alleged that then public servants were caught on camera while receiving illegal gratification from the sting operator,” CBI spokesperson R C Joshi said in Delhi. The chargsheet against the five accused persons, for whom prosecution sanction has been received, is being submitted, he said. The CBI had approached West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar seeking sanction to prosecute Hakim, Mukherjee, Mitra and Chatterjee, the officials said.