india

Updated: Sep 29, 2019 17:07 IST

A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team on Sunday morning took arrested Indian Police Service (IPS) officer S M H Mirza to the south Kolkata apartment of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national executive member Mukul Roy and shot videos of the two in connection with the pay offs in the Narada probe.

The CBI team stayed for more than an hour and recorded videos of different places inside the third floor apartment of the building on Elgin Road. “The CBI wants to recreate the incidents,” Mirza, who stood quietly when the CBI team was waiting outside the building before entering it, told journalists.

“They (CBI) came here because Mirza told them that he brought Mathew Samuel (who shot the Narada sting videos) several times to my house. It is a lie. This is a conspiracy to malign me and the BJP. There is no video that shows me accepting money,” Roy said after the CBI team left.

Roy reiterated his allegation that Trinamool Congress president and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was conspiring against him. “The chief minister herself is behind this. She has instructed all the accused people in the Narada case to take my name and malign me,” said Roy. The CBI refused to comment.

Roy was questioned by for more than two hours on Saturday afternoon after which he had alleged that Banerjee was trying to frame him.

“Cooperating with a law enforcement agency is the duty of every law-abiding citizen. I will come every time CBI summons me. I have no involvement in this case. Have you seen any video footage that shows me accepting money? Mamata Banerjee has hatched a conspiracy. She is asking all those who were arrested to take my name,” said Roy.

Though agency officials said Roy and Mirza were questioned in presence of each other, Roy refused to comment. “It (how the interrogation was conducted) is an internal matter of the CBI. Please ask them,” Roy said.

CBI made the first arrest in this case on Thursday, when they nabbed Mirza, who was believed to be close to Roy.

The Narada scam refers to a sting operation conducted between 2014 and 2016 and aired in March 2016. In the video footages, around a dozen leaders of the ruling TMC were seen accepting cash from Mathew Samuel, chief executive officer of Narada News, who posed as representative of a fictitious company. Samuel recorded the videos with his cellphone.

Those purportedly seen in the video clips were Saugata Roy, Aparupa Poddar, Sultan Ahmed, Prasun Banerjee, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar (Lok Sabha MPs), Madan Mitra, Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Suvendu Adhikari (ministers), Sovan Chatterjee (minister and Kolkata mayor), Iqbal Ahmed (MLA) and S M H Mirza, who was posted as the superintendent of Burdwan district police.

The FIR registered on April 17, 2017 also named Mukul Roy, former TMC general secretary who joined the BJP in November 2017. In end-August, CBI officers interrogated Roy. In mid-August, Sovan Chatterjee also switched to BJP.

Earlier in the week, TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee when asked whether the summons to Roy proved that the CBI was acting neutrally, said progress of the investigation needs to be watched.