Kolkata: A single-judge vacation bench of the Calcutta High Court on Monday rejected former West Bengal Sports Minister Aroop Biswas’s plea for a fast-track hearing on his petition seeking protection from coercive police action in the case of vandalism at the Yuva Bharati Krirangan in Salt Lake during Lionel Messi’s GOAT India Tour on December 13 last year.
Biswas is supposed to appear at the Bidhannagar (South) Police Station, under the Bidhannagar City Police in North 24 Parganas district, later on Monday for questioning.
Before that, on Monday morning, Biswas’s counsel and the former West Bengal advocate general in the previous Mamata Banerjee-led regime, Kishor Datta, moved a petition in the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge vacation bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharya seeking interim protection from coercive police action, including arrest in that case.
In the same petition, Biswas’s counsel pleaded for a fast-track hearing considering that the former minister is needed to be present for interrogation later in the day.
Although the single-judge vacation bench admitted the main petition for protection from coercive police action, it turned down the plea for a fast-track hearing in the matter.
On June 2, the Bidhannagar (South) Police Station had issued the first notice to the former minister asking him to appear at the said police station on June 5. However, on June 4, Biswas sent a written communique to the said police station seeking 14 days to appear for questioning on medical grounds.
With his letter, sent via a messenger, the former minister also attached a medical certificate as evidence in support of his claims of physical ailment.
However, on Sunday, the investigating officers in the matter sent a fresh notice to Biswas asking him to appear at the Bidhannagar (South) Police Station for interrogation by June 8 afternoon.
Already, his younger brother Swarup Biswas has been arrested on charges of corruption, extortion and questionable behaviour towards women supporting staff in the Bengali silver screen industry.
On Saturday, a lower court in Kolkata remanded Swarup Biswas to 14 days of police custody in the matter.
In fact, in his petition, the former West Bengal minister had claimed that following the arrest of his younger brother, he was also apprehending an arrest by the state police.
(IANS)
