Bengal: Abhishek Banerjee questioned for 6.5 hours at the CID office

Kolkata, June 16 (IANS) Trinamool Congress general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday evening came out of the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the West Bengal Police at Bhabani Bhavan in South Kolkata after facing six and a half hours of interrogation in connection with an FIR lodged over alleged inflammatory remarks and threats made to Union Home Minister Amit Shah before the Assembly elections.

He was supposed to appear at the CID headquarters by 12 noon on Tuesday. However, he arrived five minutes before the deadline and went inside after signing the visitors’ register. Thereafter, he was grilled by CID investigators.

A little after 6.30 p.m. on Tuesday, Banerjee, also the nephew of former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, walked out of the CID office. He refused to answer any media queries as he left.

At the time the report was filed, it was not clear whether he had been summoned again in the matter.

In this case, an FIR was registered against Banerjee last month at the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime Police Station under the Bidhannagar City Police. Officers of the cybercrime police station had been conducting the probe until it was handed over to the CID on June 11.

This is the third consecutive day he has been questioned in any case by an investigating agency.

On Monday, he was questioned by officials of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for over 11 hours in connection with the multi-crore cash-for-school-job case in West Bengal.

Before that, on Sunday, he was questioned by CID sleuths for 8.5 hours in connection with the CID’s ongoing probe into the signature-mismatch case.

The case revolves around allegations of forgery involving the signatures of Trinamool legislators on a State Assembly resolution nominating Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Leader of Opposition. Discrepancies in the submitted documents prompted the CID probe.

–IANS

src/dan