Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 18

Noting that no clean chit has been given to anybody, who has come under the ambit of investigation relating to the 2014 Narada sting tape case, officials in the CBI said, the agency’s application seeking sanction to prosecute four Members of Parliament including BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari was pending with the Lok Sabha Speaker for over two years.

The officials, however, said the CBI had “so far” found nothing against another BJP leader from West Bengal Mukul Roy and Lok Sabha TMC member Aparupa Poddar in the case. 

They said the CBI had written to the Lok Sabha Speaker on April 6, 2019, for sanction to prosecute TMC MPs Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Prasun Banerjee besides Adhikari, as all of them were members of the lower house when the alleged sting operation was conducted.

Adhikari, once a close confidant of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, joined the BJP in December 2020 and registered a narrow victory over West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in his pocket borough Nandigram. He is now the leader of opposition in the state assembly.

The case under investigation on the direction of Calcutta High Court pertains to a purported sting operation conducted by Mathew Samuel of Narada TV news channel in 2014 wherein people resembling TMC ministers, MPs and MLAs were allegedly seen receiving “illegal gratification” from representatives of a fictitious company in exchange for favours, the CBI officials said.

The infamous Narada scam tapes, which were clandestinely shot in 2014, were leaked ahead of 2016 assembly polls in West Bengal. However, it had no bearing on the poll results as Mamata Banerjee-led TMC returned to power for a second consecutive term.

The agency had on Monday arrested and charge-sheeted West Bengal ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, TMC MLA Madan Mitra, and former TMC leader and erstwhile Mayor of Kolkata Sovan Chatterjee, after the governor gave the sanction to prosecute them on May 7.

IPS officer SMH Meerza, who is out on bail, was also among those named in the charge sheet.

Among the 13 accused named by the CBI in its FIR, the officials said sanction for prosecution was not sought for Roy, who joined the BJP in November 2017, and Poddar, who is in TMC and is an MP from Arambagh, West Bengal.

The CBI had sought sanction for prosecution from West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar, who gave his nod under Article 164 of the Constitution on May 7 this year, the officials said, adding that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had cleared the prosecution of Meerza after which the agency filed the charge sheet against the five.