Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday granted conditional approval to Trinamool Congress’s state General secretary and spokesman Kunal Ghosh to travel abroad.
A division bench of Justice Jaymalya Bagchi and Justice Ajay Gupta permitted Ghosh to travel to Singapore to attend a function of a polytechnic college there from January 16 to January 31.
The bench, directing the Central Bureau of Invetigation (CBI) to return his passport for that purpose, also directed Ghosh to return the passport again to the central agency immediately after coming back from Singapore. At the same time, it asked him to submit a personal bond of Rs 5,00,000.
Having spent over two years behind the bars following his alleged connection with the Saradha chit fund scam and currently released on bail in 2016, Ghosh approached the division bench on January 2 seeking permission to travel to Singapore.
There were initial restrictions on him from travelling outside the state. However, later those were relaxed and the restriction was on overseas travels.
On Tuesday, the CBI counsel, however, objected to Ghosh’s overseas travel claiming that since Ghosh is one of the prime accused in the Saradha Ponzi scam on which the central agency probe is on, he should not be given the permission to travel overseas.
“The CBI has identified some transaction links with some overseas banks in the Saradha scam. Some of these overseas banks are also based out of Singapore,” the CBI counsel argued. However, the division bench did not finally accept the argument of the CBI counsel and allowed Ghosh to travel abroad.
(IANS)
