West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar has given prosecution sanction to the CBI for four senior politicians in the Narada sting operation case — two of them ministers in Mamata Banerjee previous and new cabinet, while the other two are former ministers.The four are Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Madan Mitra. The four will be charge-sheeted soon, a top CBI officer said.
The Narada sting operation case dates back to 2016 when all of them were ministers in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet, and were filmed while purportedly accepting bribes. The sting operation was carried out by a news portal, Narada, run by Mathew Samuel.According to the letter that reached the CBI from the Governor’s office on 7 May, the sanction for prosecution has been accorded for “Madan Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee, Firhad Hakim and Sovan Chatterjee”, with reference to the CBI anti-corruption bureau’s case dated 28 January. The Print has accessed a copy of the letter.
The CBI had appealed to the governor’s office for prosecution approval in January, with the agency claiming to have evidence against the accused persons. A senior CBI official said: “We were waiting for the approval. We have got the sanction. We will file the chargesheet soon.” The Narada sting operation, in which a dozen senior Trinamool leaders, including MPs and ministers, were seen accepting bribes, hit headlines before the 2016 assembly election in Bengal. A year later, in March 2017, the Calcutta High Court directed the CBI to investigate the case. The CBI registered an FIR in the case in 2017 and named 13 accused, including nine top Trinamool leaders apart from a senior IPS officer.
