Kolkata: A single-judge Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Thursday rejected a plea from the Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee, seeking an overall protection from coercive police action, including arrest in all the eight FIRs registered against him in various cases at different police stations in West Bengal.
The matter came up for hearing at the single-judge Bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya. At the end of the hearing Justice Bhattacharyya made a verbal observation that granting of an overall interim protection against coercive police action was not possible.
The next hearing in the matter will be on July 30. Justice Bhattacharyya said that if during the interim the police adopted any coercive action against him in any of these eight FIRs, the matter could be brought to the notice of the court.
During the hearing on Thursday morning, Abhishek’s counsel, Kapil Sibal informed the court that FIRs were being registered against his client one after another by the police out of sheer political vendetta and that, too, in different police stations in different corners of the state. Hence, argued Sibal, his client deserved an overall protection in all the eight FIRs registered against him just like Suvendu Adhikari had been granted overall protection by the court in the past.
Sibal’s argument was opposed by the Additional Solicitor General, S.V. Raju, who said that interim protections could be given on a case-to-case basis and not an overall one in all FIRs.
In his counter-argument, Sibal said that there had been an instance in the past where the current West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, as the-then Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, was also granted an overall protection in all cases by the Calcutta High Court and at the point in time the court also barred registering fresh FIRs against Adhikari without prior permission of the court.
Thereafter, Justice Bhattacharyya asked Sibal not to draw the example of Suvendu Adhikari in this case. He also observed that the court could not take a decision in the matter without hearing all parties concerned and hence could not give overall protection in all the FIRs at this point in time.
Thereafter, he fixed July 30 as the next date of hearing in the matter.
(IANS)
