The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday arrested Transport and Housing Minister, Firhad Hakim; Panchayat Minister, Subrata Mukherjee; TMC MLA Madan Mitra and former Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chattopadhyay in the Narada bribery case. The move came days after Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar gave his consent to the CBI for filing a chargesheet against the four accused and sanctioned prosecution against them. All four were taken on Monday morning to the CBI by central forces. To challenge their arrest, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spent six hours at the CBI office and dared the investigators to arrest her.
In a brief interaction with reporters outside the CBI office at Nizam Palace, Madan Mitra raised the question that his party has been raising ever since the arrests yesterday – why no action against Suvendu Adhikari and Mukul Roy, former Trinamool leaders who were also caught in the Narada sting but later joined the BJP.
“I have full faith in the judiciary. The BJP can employ anybody to harass me,” said Firhad Hakim, who wept on camera saying he “could not finish his job of helping people of the city in the pandemic”.
Sovan Chatterjee lashed out: “I am not a dacoit. I have not done anything wrong that the CBI could enter my bedroom to arrest me?”
“We all are bad men but not Mukul (Roy) and Suvendu (Adhikari),” said Madan Mitra.
Around 4 am, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee were shifted to hospital after they complained of breathlessness. Subrata Mukherjee was also taken to hospital briefly for a medical examination and then sent back to jail.
The Narada sting operation was conducted by Narada news founder Mathew Samuel for over two years in West Bengal. Conducted in 2014 for the news magazine Tehelka, it was published on a private news website Narada News months before the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections. Samuel is the former managing editor of Tehelka.
As part of the operation, Samuel formed a fictitious company named Impex Consultancy Solutions and approached several TMC ministers, MPs and leaders, asking them for favours in return for money. In the 52-hour footage photographed by Samuel and his colleague Angel Abraham, then TMC MPs Mukul Roy, Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Prasun Bannerjee, Suvendu Adhikari, Aparupa Poddar and Sultan Ahmad (he died in 2017), and state ministers Madan Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim and Iqbal Ahmed were seen accepting alleged bribes in the form of wads of cash in exchange for extending unofficial favours for Impex Consultancy Solutions, which was floated by Samuel himself.
IPS HMS Mirza (now suspended) was also seen taking cash from Samuel. TMC leader Shanku Deb Panda was also seen asking for shares in Samuel’s fictitious company in exchange of promised favours.
The state government initiated its own probe which booked Samuel under multiple sections of the IPC 469 (forgery to harm reputation), 500 (defamation), 120(B) (criminal conspiracy) etc. On August 5, 2016, the High Court stayed the state probe for ad infimum, observing that the police cannot run a concurrent investigation along with a court-monitored probe. Although Mukul Roy (who is now the national vice-president of the BJP) was not seen accepting cash in the video but he was seen asking Samuel to visit his party office with the promised cash. Samuel claimed that K. D. Singh, TMC Rajya Sabha MP and majority owner of Tehelka, knew and funded the entire operation. Samuel claimed that the budget of the operation was initially set at ₹2,500,000 but was later increased to ₹8,000,000. Singh, however, refuted his involvement with any aspect of the sting.
On May 9, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, on a request by the CBI, sanctioned the prosecution of Subrata Mukherjee, Firhad Hakim, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee. The statement issued by the officer on special duty (communication), Raj Bhavan, read, “Honourable governor is the competent authority to accord sanction in terms of law as he happens to be the appointing authority for such ministers in terms of Article 164 of the Constitution,” The Narada tapes, released ahead of the 2016 Assembly polls in the state, allegedly showed several TMC ministers, MPs and MLAs were allegedly seen receiving money from representatives of a fictitious company in exchange of promised favours. The Calcutta High Court had ordered a CBI probe into the sting operation in March 2017.
