A day after IPS officer from West Bengal, SMH Mirza was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Narada scam, BJP leader Mukul Roy skipped a questioning by the central agency in the same probe, saying he is busy.
Roy sent two representatives to the CBI’s office in Salt Lake CGO complex – as he was supposed to be questioned there – and said that he couldn’t make it on Friday. The CBI officers had reportedly asked Roy to be present on Friday as the agency has Mirza in their custody and wanted to have a session with Roy and the IPS officer together. The court yesterday granted the CBI custody for Mirza till September 30.
Therefore, the CBI officers handed over a notice to Roy’s representatives asking him to be present again tomorrow at the CGO complex.
The Narada videos were recorded by Mathew Samuel, and in it several individuals – including Mukul Roy and Sovon Chatterjee who are now with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – and Trinamool Congress’ Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Prasun Banerjee, IPS officer SMH Mirza and others, were seen purportedly discussing receiving cash from a journalist who posed as a person with business interests in Bengal. The videos were shown on Narada TV and have come to be known as the Narada scandal. These were shown on television in 2016, prior to the Assembly elections in Bengal.
The CBI authorities have collected voice samples from some of these persons who were said to be in the videos. The CBI has also sought permission of the Lok Sabha Speaker to prosecute Trinamool Congress MPs Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Prasun Banerjee in connection with the Narada sting operations of 2016.
