Unless you are watching it on Netflix or in a Bollywood blockbuster of yore, court hearings are usually dull as ditch water. But the action in Calcutta High Court could be competing with a limited overs match at the Eden Gardens for attention. On Monday, the judge in Room 24 battered the Enforcement Directorate with bouncers that would fill Dennis Lilee with envy, sending the ED crawling to the pavilion. Not since the Supreme Court called the CBI a “caged parrot” exactly 10 years ago while hearing what came to be known as Coalgate Scam against the UPA government has a central agency come in for such a brutal dressing down in an open court.
The court had asked the agency for reports on a company called Leaps and Bounds of which the CEO is TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee. The company and the MP are being investigated by both the ED and CBI in the teacher recruitment scam in West Bengal. But the ED’s report was apparently so shoddy, so full of holes and the gaps in information so yawning, the judge asked if ED officers were trained for the job. And more.
“I don’t know whether any further training is required or not because the court is not the investigating agency. We are only here to see whether the correct provision of law has been applied, whether you are acting in accordance with the provisions of law or not. But here it seems that everything is just illegal.
“Now it is not possible for the court to go out and run after people. The court will rely, the court will believe, the court will trust officers like you but if this is the result then I’m sorry to say that something is required to be done. …I am smelling something, in fact, anybody who is present in this courtroom and even outside, anybody who is online, will realise that all is not right,” the judge said.
Three days later, ED summoned Abhishek Banerjee, to appear on 3 October. Unconfirmed reports say his parents, directors in Leaps and Bounds, have been summoned too for the first time. Abhishek and the TMC have accused the ED and the BJP of vendetta politics for summoning him on a day when he is scheduled to lead what they have billed as a mega TMC protest in Delhi with thousands of party supporters. ED had last summoned Abhishek Banerjee on 13 September, the very day a committee of the opposition formation INDIA that includes him was to meet. Abhishek Banerjee had skipped the meeting and gone to ED. This time, he has announced he will not.
The fight against the deprivation of WB and its rightful dues shall persist regardless of the obstacles. No force on Earth can hinder my dedication to fight for the people of WB and their fundamental rights. I'll b in Delhi joining the protest on Oct 2nd & 3rd.
STOP ME IF U CAN!
— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) September 29, 2023
Now, today yet again they have served me another summons to appear before them on a day when the protest agitation for West Bengal's rightful dues is scheduled in Delhi on 3rd Oct. This stark revelation unequivocally exposes those who are truly perturbED, rattlED and scarED! pic.twitter.com/ysAy3qhqOu
— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) September 28, 2023
Political rivals of TMC are claiming the ED summon was triggered by the court hearing of Monday, a hearing that was livestreamed and is there for all to see on YouTube. The relevant case was heard over the last hour of the proceedings. It is riveting.
So, what is it that stinks?
The inefficiency of the central agency?
Not really.
Also read: Bengalis are using Sourav Ganguly as punching bag. But what’s his steel magnate story anyway
The conventional role of investigating agencies
What this courtroom drama has done is stoked public scrutiny of a bunch of questions. Opposition parties always complain that the party at the Centre uses the ED and CBI to harass its leaders. Is that what is happening here? Are ED and CBI merely harassing Abhishek Banerjee? Or are they desperately trying by their slow and shoddy work to suppress the facts that could be detrimental to the interest of the Trinamool Congress? If so, on whose instruction? The Centre’s? Why? Is there an understanding between the party at the Centre, the BJP, and Banerjee’s Trinamool: what on the streets is called a setting?
For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘setting’ basically equals a deal of some sort and is frequently used in debates on politics in Bengal. “Oh setting aachey, boss,” is common parlance. It may be Bengal’s contribution to the dictionary of political slangs used in India. Another may be “cut money”. If there are other states that beat Bengal to it, apologies. Decades ago, Bengal had contributed another word now seldom used: gherao.
Anyway, in the cauldron of West Bengal’s politics, there is a section of folk who suspect a deal between the Trinamool and BJP, one that has prevented the delivery of justice in multiple cases. The Chit Fund Scam of 2013, for instance, in which lakhs of people lost their meagre savings amounting to crores of rupees by investing in Ponzi schemes that appeared to be backed by many leaders of the ruling party. The owner of the biggest Ponzi, Sharada, who once bought a painting by Mamata Banerjee reportedly for nearly Rs two crore, is now in jail. But no other notables.
There has been no justice delivered in the Narada sting operation of 2016 in which several people resembling prominent leaders of the Trinamool Congress were seen on TV taking wads of cash from the sting operator pretending to be a businessman. One of those money-taking leaders is now with the BJP, a fact frequently used by the Trinamool to hit out at the party it, on this account, calls a “washing machine”. But no sign of the law taking its own course.
Also read: How free is the press in West Bengal? Debmalya Bagchi arrest isn’t a pretty picture
Material for political potboiler
There are at least three scams the central agencies are currently probing in West Bengal: coal smuggling, cow smuggling and jobs-for-cash, which is abbreviation for the teachers’ recruitment scam. There have been some arrests. Most prominent among them include then education minister of the state Partha Chatterjee and a film star at whose homes he had allegedly hoarded his illegally acquired cash. But no other arrests of any political significance.
Some people in the state have been, for years, asking why this indemnity. And their question, unanswered, echoed in Court room 24 of the Calcutta High Court on 25 September when the judge wondered what it was that smelt.
These questions and their imagined echoes may be hogwash or musings of someone in search of material for a political potboiler and nothing more. But they are keeping the political windmill spinning in Bengal and, today, 29 September, when Courtroom 24 live streams the hearing in the same case, viewer pressure could send Calcutta High Court’s server crashing.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)