AGENCIES
Two Trinamool Congress (TMC) ministers, Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, MLA Madan Mitra and former Kolkata Corporation Mayor Sovon Chattopadhyay have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday in the Narada sting tapes cases where several politicians and a high-ranked police officer were allegedly found accepting cash bribes in exchange for providing unofficial favours to a company.
“Hakim, Mukherjee, Mitra and Chatterjee have been arrested by CBI and are being produced in the jurisdictional court,” the CBI said in a statement adding that the charge sheet against the five persons against whom prosecution sanction is received is being submitted in the court.
The CBI had earlier arrested IPS officer SMH Meerza in connection with the case. He is presently out on bail. The CBI said that it has received the prosecution sanction against the four arrested leaders on May 7.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee held a dharna at Nizam Palace for over six hours since morning, daring the CBI to arrest her too, her stand indicating that the current situation was likely to snowball into a major political controversy weeks after results of the Bengal Assembly gave the Trinamul a runaway majority to govern the state for the third consecutive time.
“Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee have been arrested today by CBI anti-corruption bureau and are being produced in the jurisdictional court,” read a statement issued by the CBI. “On completion of investigation, prosecution sanction was sought against the public servants… Further investigation of the case shall continue.”
The arrests were made five years after the Narada News portal tapes went public in which several Bengal politicians including ministers, MPs and other functionaries and senior police officers, were caught on camera purportedly accepting bribes from a fictitious company.
Hakim, the current mayor and state transport and housing minister, Mukherjee, the panchayat minister, Mitra, the Kamarhati MLA, and Chatterjee, a former mayor, were all brought to Nizam Palace a little after 9am for questioning in connection with the television sting that has come to be known as the Narada bribery scam.