PTI
Kolkata
The West Bengal CID on Tuesday launched simultaneous searches at Trinamool Congress’ central office at party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence and at national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s Camac Street office in the city, probing alleged forged signatures of TMC MLAs that triggered a party split.
The agency officers maintained that the raids were held to dredge out the original copy of TMC’s meeting resolution book and attendance sheet containing signatures of 70 MLAs present at the May 6 meeting held in the party office adjacent to former chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence.
Both Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek were out of town, at the national capital for their scheduled meetings with leaders of the Opposition INDIA bloc.
According to the CID, Abhishek Banerjee, based on the said resolution, had first intimated the Speaker of the Bengal Assembly, on May 9, that the party had chosen Sobhabdeb Chattopadhyay as the Assembly’s leader of Opposition, Asima Patra and Nayna Bandyopadhyay as deputy LoPs and Firhad Hakim as the chief whip.
Agency officers said that Abhishek followed up the intimation with a written communication to the Speaker on May 20, where he enclosed a copy of the meeting resolution book and the attendance sheet, reiterating the party’s endorsement for the assembly posts.
Two expelled TMC legislators – Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha – had lodged a complaint before Speaker Rathindra Bose that “no resolution was adopted about the selection of LoP” in the party’s May 6 meeting, and that the duo had signed the meeting resolution book on a later date on May 19.
The MLAs alleged that the May 6 resolution was “manufactured and fabricated” and stated that as many as 14 of the 70 signatures were in “block letters”.
The CID had taken over the probe from the Kolkata Police on May 28, a day after the Hare Street police station registered a case based on a complaint from the principal secretary of the state Assembly with charges of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.
Tuesday’s raids for the said documents were conducted in the wake of Abhishek Banerjee skipping three back-to-back appearance notices issued by the CID for questioning where the agency asked the leader to carry the original documents for necessary forensic examination, sources said.
Agency officials, accompanied by personnel from the Kalighat police station and a large contingent of women police personnel, arrived at the party’s central office at 30B Harish Chatterjee Street in Kalighat at around 3 pm, sources said.
Abhishek was summoned for the third time by the CID to appear before it in connection with the case by 5 pm on Tuesday, after he avoided appearance on two earlier occasions – on June 1 and June 8.
While the search operations at the Harish Chatterjee Street premises lasted for about two hours, the one at Camac Street went on for three, with no significant seizures made by the agency from either of the two premises, an officer said.
As soon as the news of the raids spread, senior TMC leaders and MLAs Kunal Ghosh and Madan Mitra reached the residence of the party supremo but were not allowed to enter the premises.
Later, TMC MP and advocate Kalyan Banerjee reached the spot and spoke to the CID officials.
The BJP and West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari are trying to harass the TMC supremo, the party MP alleged.
“The CID officials deliberately visited her residence on a day when she is out of town. The action of CID is not in accordance with the law. The CID team said that, as the meeting and the resolution were adopted here, they are searching the office of Mamata Banerjee. This logic is absurd. This is vendetta politics,” he told reporters.
Initially, the investigating team was prevented from entering both the premises, leading to a brief standoff drama with security personnel posted at the two premises.
