Kolkata: After remaining absconding for a long time, Sumit Roy, the Personal Assistant of the Trinamool Congress General Secretary and the party’s Lok Sabha member, Abhishek Banerjee, finally surfaced Saturday morning and appeared at the office of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in South Kolkata to face interrogation.
He was absconding for a long time with multiple cases and FIRs registered against him. He had also approached both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court for interim protection from coercive police action, including arrest.
Finally, the apex court earlier this week granted him the interim protection in a case of illegal-land-grabbing registered against him. Armed with that apex court-granted interim protection, Roy finally appeared at the CID office Saturday.
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He reached Bhavani Bhavan shortly before 10 am Saturday. The CID sleuths had served a notice at his residence in South Kolkata on Friday evening asking him to be present at the agency’s office by 11 a.m.
August 6, the Supreme Court’s Division Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI), Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana granted Roy interim protection in the illegal land-grabbing case registered against him at Salboni Police Station.
However, the apex court granted the interim protection subject to Roy joining the investigation and extending full cooperation to the investigating agency. The apex court ordered that his arrest will remain stayed till further orders.
Roy moved the Supreme Court after the Calcutta High Court earlier this week rejected his anticipatory bail plea in connection with the land-grabbing case registered by the Salboni Police Station in West Midnapore district.
Rejecting the plea, a single-judge Bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh of the Calcutta High Court held that it was not a fit case for grant of anticipatory bail in view of the nature of the allegations and the material collected during the investigation.
The case relates to allegations that Roy grabbed and sold government-vested land in Salboni using forged documents. Following a complaint, the police registered an FIR and launched an investigation.
As Roy could not be traced at his known addresses, a local court issued an arrest warrant against him. The Criminal Investigation Department of West Bengal Police had earlier issued a lookout notice against Roy.
In June, police teams also conducted searches at Abhishek Banerjee’s residence in Kolkata’s Kalighat and at Roy’s in-laws’ residence in Serampore, but he was not found.
