Calcutta HC grants protection from coercive action to Mukul

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed the police not to take any coercive action against BJP leader Mukul Roy in connection with its probe in a case of alleged extortion call by an unknown person.

Granting the protection to Roy till April 23, Justice Tirthankar Ghosh, however, allowed the investigators to summon the BJP leader for questioning in case of important circumstances by giving him a seven-day advance notice.

The order was passed in connection with Roy's anticipatory bail prayer before the court related to the case filed against him by his one-time aide Sujit Shyam.

The matter will come up for hearing again on April 23.

Roy's lawyer Bikash Bhattacharya submitted before the court that the complaint does not disclose any offence by the petitioner, adding that it is a made up complaint based on political considerations.

The public prosecutor, appearing for the police, submitted a report before the court which said that the caller, on the basis of whose alleged telephone calls the complaint was lodged with the Kalighat police station in the city, could not be identified till date.

Roy appeared before the investigating officers twice in connection with the probe.

During the hearing of Roy's bail application, Justice Ghosh noted that the investigators have not seized the mobile phone to which the calls were allegedly made. The PP told the court that call records of the phone were obtained by the police.

Sujit Shyam, in an FIR filed at Kalighat police station, had claimed that he received calls from a mobile number and the caller asserted that he has got documents in a CD which could be damaging for the Trinamool Congress and offered it to him for a sum of Rs 1.5 crore.

Shyam also claimed that the unknown caller, the main accused in the case, had told him that Mukul Roy had earlier shown interest in buying the CD for a higher amount, but had backed out later.

In his complaint, Shyam had accused the BJP leader of being behind the telephone calls.

Roy, TMC founder and the party's once second most powerful leader, had joined the BJP in 2017.