Don’t shift me to Delhi’s Tihar, TMC’s Anubrata Mondal tells HC. Hearing tomorrow
TMC leader Anubrata Mondal, a prime suspect in the Bengal cattle smuggling case, moved the high courts in Kolkata and Delhi after the Asansol court in West Burdwan district on Thursday allowed him to be shifted
KOLKATA: The Calcutta high court will hear on Saturday morning an appeal by Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Anubrata Mondal against his transfer from a West Bengal jail to Delhi’s Tihar jail, according to the TMC leader’s lawyers.
Calcutta high court judge Bibek Chaudhuri started a virtual hearing on Mondal’s appeal on Friday but the proceedings were adjourned because of the death of eminent barrister and former Union minister Satyabrata Mookherjee, lawyers said.
Mookherjee, 82, the father of Bengal’s serving advocate general S N Mookherjee, died at his south Kolkata home on Friday morning.
Mondal’s lawyers said justice Chaudhuri requested the chief justice to let him hold a special hearing on Saturday morning, a holiday. A notice issued on chief justice Prakash Shrivastava’s orders on the high court’s website later said justice Chaudhari will hear a criminal revisional application at 11am.
In Delhi, the high court’s justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma refused to hear a similar petition filed by senior lawyer Kapil Sibal who has been representing Mondal since last year. According to Mondal’s lawyers, justice Sharma said he will hear the petition after it is heard by the Calcutta high court.
Mondal, a prime suspect in the Bengal cattle smuggling case, moved the high courts in Kolkata and Delhi after the Asansol court in West Burdwan district on Thursday allowed him to be shifted to Tihar jail so that he can be produced before Delhi’s Rouse Avenue court by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). A Delhi court, which issued a production warrant for Mondal in December 2022, on Wednesday asked why the TMC leader wasn’t being produced.
An ED official who asked for anonymity said the federal agency was ready to shift Mondal to Delhi on Friday but the plan wasn’t implemented because the 62-year-old TMC strongman was unwell and had to be shifted to the hospital at Asansol correctional home.
During the brief virtual hearing at the Calcutta high court, Mondal told the judge that he was suffering from fistula and was bleeding.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Mondal on August 11 last year in connection with the cattle smuggling case. He was named in the CBI’s fourth charge sheet filed at the Asansol court on October 7.
Mondal was later arrested by ED on November 17 in connection with money laundering charges linked to the case.
Mondal’s former bodyguard, Sehgal Hossain, who was arrested by CBI on June 10 last year and named in the agency’s third charge sheet filed on August 8, was earlier shifted to Delhi’s Tihar jail on ED’s request.