Calcutta High Court’s single judge-bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha on Wednesday gave a deadline to the CBI to complete its probe against Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Aparupa Poddar a.k.a Afrin Ali in connection with the Narada sting operation.
On April 18, Poddar approached the bench of Justice Mantha with the plea of expunging her name from the FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the 2016 Narada sting video case.
In her plea, Poddar, the Trinamool Congress MP from Arambagh Lok Sabha constituency in Hooghly district, said many years have passed since the central agency started investigation in the matter and nothing concrete has surfaced on this count. In such a situation the continuation of her name being included in the FIR is resulting in maligning of her image, she argued in her plea.
Passing the order on her plea, Justice Mantha had set a deadline of four months to complete the probe against Poddar. However, Justice Mantha clearly mentioned that the four-month deadline was only for Poddar and not the other accused in the case. He also observed that if the central agency is unable to complete the probe against Poddar in the matter, her name will be expunged from the ambit of investigation.
The Narada video sting operation surfaced just before the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections. It showed several Trinamool leaders and an IPS officer receiving money against promises of doling out favours.
Although the opposition forces like Left Front-Congress alliance and BJP used the sting in a major way in their campaign against the ruling Trinamool Congress, the people of the state brought back Mamata Banerjee and her party with a huge majority in the Assembly polls that year.
Soon after the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls, CBI arrested state municipal affair & urban development minister and Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim, the then state panchayat affairs and rural development minister, Late Subrata Mukherjee, Trinamool Congress legislator Madan Mitra and former mayor of Kolkata Sovan Chatterjee in this connection. All four of them were seen receiving cash in the sting videos.
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