Kolkata: Chief Justice
Manjula Chellur and Justice Arijit Banerjee of Calcutta High Court on Friday
directed Mathew Samuel, the CEO of Narada
News, to appear before the court through his counsel on March 22.
Friday’s announcement
came as a response to three Public Interest Litigations (PILs), one each filed
by Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Amitabha Chakraborty, BJP
leader Brajesh Jha and advocate Akshay Sarengi. All three PILs sought a Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the video exposing the alleged
acceptance of money by Trinamool leaders, including ministers and MPs.
Bikash Bhattacharya,
the counsel for the three petitioners, said, “We had prayed for preservation of
the video for proper investigation. State advocate general Jayanta Mitra and
Kalyan Bandopadhyay, counsel for the Trinamool leaders shown in the video,
sought dismissal of the petition. Bandopadhyay had prayed the court to not
interfere as the allegation had been referred to the Ethics Committee of
Parliament. The court admitted all three PILs and issued a directive to Samuel
for appearance before the court.”
The
controversy arose when the tape of a two-year-old "sting operation"
titled "X -Files" by news portal Narada surfaced on March 14 showing Trinamool Congress (TMC)
members taking cash to allegedly work as lobbyists for a fictitious corporate
consultancy firm. The revelation came weeks before assembly polls in West
Bengal. The footage showed several TMC leaders, including state ministers
Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, being allegedly bribed to help a fictitious
Chennai-based company get business in the state.
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