The developments come as Mondal faces a two-way attack from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the scam.
Posted Date – Tue, 11/29/22 at 11:14am
The developments come as Mondal faces a two-way attack from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the scam.
Calcutta: Trinamool Congress strongman and the party’s Birbhum district chairman Anubrata Mondal on Tuesday applied to the Kolkata High Court for bail in the tens of millions of cattle smuggling scam.
The developments come as Mondal faces a two-way attack from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the scam.
The agency’s special court in Asansol, West Burdwan district, has been extending his judicial detention, including the last one on November 25, amid successive objections from CBI lawyers.
The ED is taking all steps to bring Mondal to New Delhi to question him at the agency’s headquarters. It had filed a plea for Mondal’s transit remand at the Rouse Avenue Court in New Delhi, which was challenged by Mondal’s lawyers in the Delhi High Court. A hearing on the matter will be held at the Delhi High Court on December 1.
Meanwhile, his lawyers have filed a bail plea with the Kolkata High Court as an interim measure. In fact, on November 25, Mondal’s lawyer, Somnath Chattaraj, surprised everyone by not filing any bail plea at the CBI special court in Asansol.
Chattaraj told the media that there is a possibility of a higher court for this charge, so they did not make a bail request.
Gaining bail at this juncture has become extremely important not only for Mondal but also for his own party, political observers say, as the state holds elections for a three-tier parliament next year.
“In the absence of Anubrata Mondal, the organizational structure of the state’s ruling party has taken a hit in Birbhum district, where the ruling party swept almost all the seats in the district’s three-tier village council system in the last rural citizen body polls in 2018, All credit goes to Mondal. That’s why Mondal was retained as the party’s regional chairman,” a political observer pointed out.
