TMC Attacks HC Judge For Asking ED-CBI To Interrogate Abhishek Banerjee And Kuntal Ghosh Together

The high court’s Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay ruled on Thursday that Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary, and suspended TMC leader Kuntal Ghosh should be brought together and questioned by the investigators looking into allegations of corruption in school recruitments (SSC Scam). The judge requests that the two be questioned about a fictitious letter that Ghosh allegedly wrote to the Hasting police station and Special (CBI) court-1. 

Ghosh is claimed to have mentioned in the letter that investigators had been physically torturing him to incriminate Banerjee in the case. Ghosh was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in January for his suspected role in the school recruitment scam. Ghosh had written letters to the Special (CBI) Court-1 and the Hastings police station on Wednesday, the attorney representing the ED revealed to Justice Gangopadhyay, accusing ED personnel of bullying him. The court was presented with Ghosh’s letter on Wednesday. 

After reading the letter, the judge instructed the police not to take any action against an ED officer based on the allegedly written letter until the matter was heard on Thursday. This was part of an interim order. Before the court’s registrar general, the judge had retained the letter in a sealed cover. 

Justice Gangopadhyay read the letter once more on Thursday. Attorney Bikash Bhattacharyya, who is representing the petitioners in the corruption case, claimed that the letter was drafted on someone else’s initiative and that the accusations stated in it were untrue. Justice Gangopadhay’s main conclusion was that the letter Ghosh wrote was pre-planned, fabricated, and founded on untrue accusations. The investigators appear to have so far been able to get to the crime’s waist and will soon be able to get to its ear and head, the judge commented.

Justice Gangopadhyay also accepted Bhattacharyya’s argument and claimed that Ghosh had written the letter after Banerjee claimed, in a rally on March 29 at the Shaheed Minar grounds, that some of the accused were being tortured in order to implicate him in the school scam case. On April 20, the subject will be heard once more. The judge prolonged the temporary injunction issued on Wednesday prohibiting the police from acting against any CBI or ED personnel as a result of the letter. 

On the other hand, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh told reporters on Thursday that Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court was abusing the legal system and targeting party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. Furthermore, according to Ghosh, the judge’s ‘political wish list’ was revealed by such observations. “Unfortunately, there is a segment of the Calcutta High Court that is becoming increasingly predictable and exposing their political wish list. They are impugning the judiciary itself”, according to Ghosh. “Even if these were observations, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay’s words and statements today are entirely outside the bounds of the law and the court’s authority.”