Kolkata: A single-judge Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday granted interim protection from coercive police action including arrest, to Trinamool Congress General Secretary and the party’s Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha MP, Abhishek Banerjee in three more FIRs registered against him.
With this, Abhishek Banerjee, also the nephew of former West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, now has interim protection in eight out of a total of 16 FIRs registered against him at different police stations in the state.
Of the three FIRs, in which Calcutta High Court’s single-judge Bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya granted him interim protection on Friday, two have been registered at Bishnupur Police Station and one at Rabindra Nagar Police Station, with both the police stations coming under the jurisdictions of Diamond Harbour Police District in South 24 Parganas district.
All the cases were related to mass irregularities at the free Sebashray health camp, run by Abhishek Banerjee during the previous Trinamool Congress regime.
On Friday, Justice Bhattacharyya granted interim protection to Abhishek Banerjee till September 11 and the next hearing on the three cases will be on September 7.
The eight other cases in which the Diamond Harbour MP is yet to get interim protection will be heard on August 25.
The Trinamool Congress general secretary had alleged that since the change of regime in West Bengal after the recently concluded Assembly polls earlier this year, he had been especially targeted by the new BJP government out of political vendetta and hence several baseless FIRs have been registered against him.
However, the complainants in those cases accused the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha MP of rampantly misusing his authority when the previous regime was in power.
They have alleged that while during the previous regime they were not allowed to file police complaints, now with the change in government in the state they are getting the chance to do so and hence FIRs are piling up against the Trinamool Congress general secretary.
(IANS)
