The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered the house arrest of the two Bengal ministers, one MLA and the former Kolkata Mayor who have been held in the Narada bribery case.
The Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Arjit Banerjee was hearing the case.
This comes a day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had labelled the arrests as “political vendetta”.
“The matter is sub judice and I do not want to comment. However, I will say whatever happened to them is wrong. It is a clear instance of deliberate political vendetta. Bobby [Firhad Hakim] and his team were fighting Covid from the streets. He even volunteered for a trial of Covishield [vaccine] with risk to his life. Now he and others are kept behind bars day after day. Three to four days have passed. They could not work for days. I hope we will get justice from the court,” the chief minister told reporters.
The CBI has filed a petition urging the judges to transfer the trial from a special CBI court to the High Court, declare the proceedings in the agency court on May 17 a nullity in the eyes of the law, and conduct the proceedings afresh. The four leaders, meanwhile, have appealed to the court to revoke its stay on the bail that the CBI court had granted them.
The CBI court had granted bail to the four “under the cloud of mobocracy, pressure, threat and violence and is a nullity in the eyes of law”, the agency’s counsel argued. The CBI has made Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, state Law Minister Moloy Ghatak and TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee party to the transfer plea.