Abhishek Banerjee appears before CBI in West Bengal school job scam
The Hindu
Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on May 20, 2023, appeared before the CBI in connection with the West Bengal school job scam.
Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Saturday, May 20, 2023, appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the West Bengal school job scam.
The agency has issued summons to the Diamond Harbour MP on Friday, May 19, after the Calcutta High Court dismissed his petition seeking recall of a previous order of the same court which said that investigative agencies such as CBI and ED could interrogate him in the teacher recruitment scam.
Before his appearance before the agency Mr. Banerjee wrote to the CBI citing that he has preferred Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court challenging Calcutta High Court Justice Amrita Sinha order and the same shall be mentioned before the Supreme Court for urgent hearing on May 22 or when the court permits.
The Trinamool’s second in command had to suspend the party’s outreach initiative in Bankura to appear before the agency on Saturday. Mr. Banerjee on Friday had dared the CBI to arrest him. He has said that for the past three years the central agencies were trying to frame him first in coal (pilferage scam), then in cattle (smuggling) and now SSC (school service commission) recruitment scam.
While summons to Mr. Banerjee have been issued in the past by the CBI as well as the Enforcement Directorate in the coal pilferage scam, the name of the Trinamool leader in the recruitment scam came up last month, when an accused Kuntal Ghosh wrote to the Court alleging that he was threatened by the agencies to name Mr. Banerjee.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, in his order on April 13, said that accused Kuntal Ghosh could be questioned by the central agencies along with Mr. Banerjee. The Supreme Court on April 28 urged the then acting chief justice of the Calcutta High Court T.S. Sivagnanam to reassign two cases Soumen Nandy versus the State of West Bengal and Ramesh Malik versus State of West Bengal to a separate Bench. The matter was listed before Justice Amrita Sinha who refused to grant any relief to Mr. Banerjee in connection with appearing before the investigating agencies.
“We are judges and therefore, cannot act like Mughals of a bygone era ... the writ courts in the guise of doing justice cannot transcend the barriers of law,” the High Court of Karnataka observed while setting aside an order of a single judge, who in 2016 had extended the lease of a public premises allotted to a physically challenged person to 20 years contrary to 12-year period stipulated in the law.
The High Court of Karnataka on Monday declined to interfere, at present, in the investigation against a Bharatiya Janata Party worker, who is among the accused persons facing charges of circulating obscene clips, related to “morphed” images and videos clips related to Prajwal Revanna, former Hassan MP, in public domain through pen drives and other modes.