Status will go down if charge lower than murder slapped: Adhir

West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who has a slew of criminal cases pending against him including murder charges, today said that it had been a practice with the ruling parties in the state to slap false cases on him.
The three-time MP and Minister of State for Railway sarcastically said that his status would go down if any charge lower than that of murder was slapped on him.
"Don't talk of any charge lower than that of murder against me. If you do so then my status would go down," Chowdhury, a Murshidabad strongman, told a Meet the Press programme here.

Chowdhury said that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had once asked him as to why so many criminal cases were pending against him.
"I told him that it is the practise of whichever party is in power in Bengal to slap false cases against me.
"It has become such that if cases were not being filed against me, I start feeling that I am on the wrong path and when charges are slapped against me, I am reassured that I am on the right path," the WB Congress Committee president said about his conversation with the Gandhi family scion.

Asked if he saw a conspiracy against him in a murder charge alongwith other charges having been slapped on him in connection with the death of a person in Murshidabad district a few days back, he said, "Trinamool Congress has adopted the same style as that of the CPI(M) of implicating me in false cases."

Replying to a question, Chowdhury, who is fighting from Baharampur seat in his bid win the election for the fourth time, said, "If Adhir Chowdhury is a murderer, then why is the police of West Bengal sitting idle? They should have arrested me and put me in jail."
According to his affidavit for 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Chowdhury had two murder charges, a case under the Arms Act and several other charges like intimidation, etc pending against him.