Narada bench plea rejected

TT, Calcutta, Aug. 19: Calcutta High Court today turned down an appeal by senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya to constitute a special bench for the speedy disposal of two public interest litigations seeking a CBI probe into the Narada sting.

Bhattacharyya, appearing for one of the petitioners, had appealed to the bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice Arijit Banerjee: "My lord (Justice Chellur), you are leaving this court. Please ensure that we get justice soon. Please assign a special bench for the hearing of the PILs. Otherwise, the matter will die."

Chief Justice Chellur has been transferred to Bombay High Court as its chief justice and today was her last working day at Calcutta High Court.

Chief Justice Chellur said: "The next chief justice will decide who will hear the matter. I should not pass any order now."

Justice Chellur fixed the hearing of the PILs for August 26, when acting Chief Justice Girish Chandra Gupta's division bench will take up the matter.

"The interim order issued by us will continue till further order," Justice Chellur said.

The division bench headed by Justice Chellur had issued an interim order on August 5 restraining the state from conducting a parallel probe into the Narada sting. This order will be in place till Justice Gupta's division bench issues a fresh one.

Except for Madan Mitra and Subrata Mukherjee, all other Trinamul leaders whose purported images were seen on the Narada tapes filed affidavits today stating their views on the report of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, on the sting videos. The leaders said they would like to contest the report.

It is, however, not clear on what basis the leaders will contest the report as the contents have not been made public.

The lawyers appearing for Mitra and Mukherjee prayed for time to file affidavits on behalf of their clients. Chief Justice Chellur granted the prayer.

The chief justice said: "I had said I would send the tapes containing the operation to the central forensic laboratory. I have kept my promise and the report has reached (the court). Now the next judge will decide what would be done."

The Narada videos show images of people resembling several Trinamul leaders and a police officer either accepting cash from a journalist posing as the agent of a fictitious company or directing him to persons or places where the money had to be submitted. The videos had been sent to the Chandigarh lab to check their veracity.

The laboratory report reached the high court on August 5. Going through it, Chief Justice Chellur had said: "The report has both sides - some positive and some negative. The lab has failed to find out whether some portions of the video footage are genuine."