From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the Enforcement Directorate’s summons to Trinamul Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee and his wife Rujira for interrogation in Delhi and asked it to probe them in Kolkata as pressed in their petition in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged coal scam in West Bengal.
A 3-judge Bench of Justices Uday Umesh Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia said it would not tolerate any kind of obstruction and interference by the state machinery if ED interrogates them in Kolkata.
Abhishek being a nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and a Trinamul Congress MP, the ED had pleaded in an earlier hearing that he was quite influential and may obstruct his interrogation, citing how the CBI officials were “gheraoed” in Kolkata in May last year.
In the last hearing on May 12, the Bench had indicated that the ED better conduct the interrogations in Kolkata and directed the Kolkata Police to extend cooperation to the ED, stressing that it will have to make a requisition 72 hours in advance.
The ED case is based on a November 2020 FIR registered by the CBI alleging a multi-crore rupee coal pinferage scam from the Eastern Coalfields Limited mines in Bengal’s Kunustoria and Kajora areas in and around Asansol.
The Court also issued a notice to the ED on Banerjee’s plea against Delhi High Court order and sought a response within three week, fixing the hearing on July 19, a week after its vacation ends.
The ED counsel defended summons to Abhishek and his wife citing how in a high voltage drama in Kolkata on May 17 last year, the TMC supporters demonstrated all over the city, hurled stones at the security personnel outside CBI office at Nizam Palace and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee offered to court arrest in protest of the CBI detention of her two ministers in the Narada case. Banerjees’ case was fought by senior advocate Kapil Sibal.
