The Supreme court told the CBI on Tuesday, to proceed against the West Bengal Chief Minister and other senior ministers like Moloy Ghatak of the state for obstructing legal process by creating ruckus and lawlessness in CBI office at Kolkata when prominent TMC leaders were arrested by the CBI in the 2016 Narada Sting Operation case where top TMC politicians were caught on camera accepting bribes.

On May 17th when CBI arrested senior leaders close to Mamta Banerjee, Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee in connection with the Narada case, Mamata Banerjee barged into the CBI office at Kolkata and passed derogatory and defamatory statements against them. The CBI said to the Supreme Court that Mamata Banerjee tried to intimidate their officers and sat on a Dharna for over 6 hours at the CBI office impeding legal process post-arrest of the accused TMC leaders.

The CBI also stated that a large unruly mob of TMC workers laid siege on the CBI building at Nizam Palace in Kolkata, pelted stones on the office and created ruckus to obstruct the process of law.

The CBI had appealed to the Supreme Court against the house arrest of the said TMC leaders and wanted the Narada case to be transferred out of the State due to the charged atmosphere and intimidatory tactics used by Mamata Banerjee which is not conducive for pursuing the case in West Bengal. The Supreme Court said that transfer of the case to other State would demoralise the Calcutta High Court and advised the CBI to withdraw its application for the same.

While the SC bench observed that they do not appreciate the dharna and mob incitement tactics used by the Chief Minister to pressurise the CBI, it insisted that, “We do not like to mix liberty of citizens with whatever illegal acts of politicians.”

The Acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court on Friday formed a five-member bench to hear the interim bail plea of the four TMC bigwigs arrested on May 17th as the two judges of the division bench had conflicting views.

So, the five-judge bench of Calcutta High Court would now hear the case further. In 2016, a sting operation was conducted by a media organisation named Narada, which had recorded a 52-hours video showing many senior leaders of the Trinamool Congress like Mukul Roy, Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Prasun Banerjee, Suvendhu Adhikari, Aparupa Poddar and Sultan Ahmad and cabinet ministers like Madan Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee, Firhad Hakim and Iqbal Ahmed accepting bundles of currency notes as bribes for favouring contracts to a fictitious company.

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