Narada sting case: Calcutta High Court stays bail to Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee

People may have a feeling that it is not rule of law which prevails but it is a mob which has an upper hand and especially in a case where it is led by the Chief Minister of the State, said the court. (PTI)

The Calcutta High Court has stayed a lower court’s decision to grant bail to two TMC ministers and an MLA along with a former party leader who were arrested by the CBI yesterday. The CBI has also filed a charge sheet in the case. The court will now hear the matter on May 19.

The bail was granted by a special CBI court. The central agency then moved to a division bench of Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Arijit Banerjee demanding a stay on the bail given to state ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, TMC MLA Madan Mitra, and former TMC leader and erstwhile Mayor of Kolkata Sovan Chatterjee.

The High Court said that the accused person shall be treated to be in judicial custody till further orders. The CBI was represented in the high court by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.

Mehta submitted in the court that the law minister of Bengal went to the CBI court with a crowd of 2000-3000 supporters and they remained in the court premises throughout the proceedings which shows a total failure of rule of law.

The court said that the confidence of the people in the judiciary will be eroded if such incidents are allowed. “People may have a feeling that it is not rule of law which prevails but it is a mob which has an upper hand and especially in a case where it is led by the Chief Minister of the State in the office of CBI and by the Law Minister of the State in the Court Complex,” noted the court in its judgement.

Reflecting upon the incident outside the CBI office and court, the court termed the situation ‘extraordinary. “This court has been called upon to deal with an extra-ordinary situation where Chief Minister of the State can sit on a dharna outside the office of the Central Bureau of Investigation (for short, ‘CBI’)along with her supporters, which had investigated the case and was to present a charge-sheet in court against the accused who are senior party leaders of the party in power in the State, some of them being Ministers. Not only this, the Law Minister of the State was present in Court where the accused were to be presented along with a mob of 2000 to 3000 supporters”, the Court observed in its order.

Extraordinary situation where the CM of a State can sit on a dharna outside the CBI office & where the Law minister leads a mob of 2000 to 3000 people to court premises!
This was the judgment of Calcultta HC.
Mamata indicted in lawlessness and rightly so ..SHAME!! pic.twitter.com/22F71p46w9

— Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj) May 18, 2021

The leaders were arrested in the Narada bribery case in which a journalist from Delhi met them in Kolkata posing as a businessman. He offered them cash on the pretext of setting business in the state and recorded all the incidents on camera.