IPS officer SMZ Mirza in police custody

KOLKATA: CBI investigators on Sunday took suspended IPS officer SMH Mirza to the Elgin Road flat of BJP leader Mukul Roy here in a bid to reconstruct the sequence of events, based on Mirza’s statements, in the Narada scam.

On Saturday, the CBI had questioned Roy along with Mirza for nearly three hours in the Narada sting operation case. Roy was then asked to appear before the agency again on Sunday. Mirza has been in CBI custody since Thursday.

The Narada tapes, released before the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections, showed someone resembling Roy — then a senior Trinamool Congress leader — talking to Mathew Samuel, the Narada News boss who had posed as a Chennai-based businessman to carry out the sting. The tapes also showed someone resembling Mirza accepting cash and telling Samuel about his connection with Roy while mentioning a payment of Rs 1.7 crore. Mirza has also reportedly said during questioning by the CBI that he had been working under Roy’s instructions.

Sunday’s reconstruction was to establish how (or whether) Mirza used to visit Roy’s flat, as he has claimed. A dozen officers, led by Ranjit Sinha , the investigating officer of the Narada probe, reached Roy’s flat around 11.30am. Mirza took the team to the building’s entrance, explaining how he used to reach Roy’s residence. As the team reached the gate and tried to take the stairs, Mirza stopped them and took the lift to reach Roy’s third-floor flat, telling them that was the way he used to go.

“I have come here to help them in reconstructing a crime,” Mirza told reporters present there, standing below the apartment. The CBI officers and Mirza went into the flat of Roy, who was inside. They came out after 30 minutes.

CBI sources on Sunday indicated that in one of the tapes, Samuel was seen entering a building on Elgin Road. The CBI officers wanted to ascertain whether the room where Samuel was seen in the footage sitting with Roy belonged to the BJP leader’s Elgin Road flat. The investigators wanted to videograph the area to reconstruct a clearer sequence of events.

A tape that was released by Samuel in March 2016 showed Mirza talking to the former, who posed as a businessman lobbying for a fictitious company called Impex Consultancy. In one of the clips on the tape recorded at a hotel near the Dum Dum airport, Mirza purportedly told Samuel that Roy had refused to accept “a briefcase from a chap” and asked him (Samuel) to meet him (Mirza).

Roy later told reporters that he was ready to cooperate with the agency. “It is absolutely a political ploy by the Trinamool Congress. They have asked each of the accused persons to point fingers at me. But you will never see me taking money from anyone,” he said. Hours later, Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said the CBI was performing the task it had been entrusted with. “The CBI should be allowed to perform its duty,” Ghosh said.

In a message on a social networking platform, Samuel said “I am happy that people will not be able to point fingers that it (sting) is sponsored by any political party.”

Mirza, who is in five-day CBI custody, will be produced at a special CBI court on Monday.



In Video: Narada sting case: CBI reaches BJP leader Mukul Roy's residence for interrogation