Abhishek appears before CID for questioning in LoP selection signature forgery case

Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Thursday appeared before the West Bengal CID to face questions in the signature forgery case over the party's choice of Leader of Opposition in the state assembly. Banerjee skipped three previous appearance notices before the investigating agency sleuths, citing illness and his filing of a challenge petition before the Calcutta High Court. This was the TMC Diamond Harbour MP's first tryst with a state probe agency following the change of guards at Bengal's power corridors. Earlier, he had been questioned on multiple occasions by central agencies -- ED and CBI -- in connection with coal pilferage and school jobs recruitment scams. He reached CID headquarters 'Bhabani Bhaban' at around 5.50 pm after the high court on Thursday granted him interim protection from any coercive action. The court had directed the TMC MP to appear before the CID at its headquarters by 6 pm on Thursday.

Banerjee returned to Kolkata around 4.30 pm from Delhi, where he had spent the past three days holding meetings with INDIA bloc leaders, including Rahul Gandhi. His arrival was marked by chaotic scenes at the airport, where a section of angry people, amid the crowd which had gathered there, shouted "signature chor" slogans at him. After a nearly 30-minute stopover at his Kalighat residence, Banerjee arrived at Bhabani Bhaban about 10 minutes ahead of the court-stipulated deadline, with the premises wrapped in tight security cover.

The CID on Tuesday conducted simultaneous searches at the TMC’s central office at party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence and at Abhishek’s Camac Street office in the city, in their bid to recover the original copy of the TMC’s meeting resolution book and attendance sheet containing signatures of 70 MLAs present at the May 6 meeting, but returned empty-handed. Based on the resolution, the MP had allegedly named Sobhabdeb Chattopadhyay as the assembly’s Leader of Opposition, Asima Patra and Nayna Bandyopadhyay as deputy LoPs and Firhad Hakim as the chief whip. CID officers had said that Abhishek had sent a written communication to the Speaker on May 20, where he enclosed a copy of the meeting resolution book and the attendance sheet, reiterating the party’s endorsement for the assembly posts.

Two expelled TMC legislators – Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha – had lodged a complaint before Speaker Rathindra Bose that "no resolution was adopted about the selection of LoP" in the party's May 6 meeting, and that the duo had signed the meeting resolution book on a later date on May 19. The MLAs alleged that the May 6 resolution was "manufactured and fabricated" and stated that as many as 14 of the 70 signatures were in "block letters".

The CID had taken over the probe from Kolkata Police on May 28, a day after the Hare Street police station registered a case based on a complaint from the principal secretary of the state assembly with charges of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. In its summons, the state agency directed Banerjee to appear before its sleuths with the original copy of the resolution book for mandatory forensic tests to ascertain the genuineness of the signatures in question.