Kolkata: Aprarupa Poddar aka Afrin Ali, the Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member from Arambagh in Hooghly district, approached the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday seeking to expunge her name from the FIR filed by the CBI in connection with the 2016 Narada sting video case.
The high court’s single-judge bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha has listed the matter for hearing on April 20.
In the 2016 Narada sting video, conducted by journalist Mathew Samuel, several top Trinamool leaders, including MPs, MLAs and ministers, were seen accepting cash from the ‘representative’ of a ‘corporate entity’ against promises of doling out favours. The CBI later took over the investigation, which is yet to be completed.
According to Afrin Ali, many years have passed since the central agency started the investigation in the matter but nothing concrete has surfaced so far. In such a situation, naming her in the FIR is resulting in maligning of her image, Afrin Ali argued in her plea.
The Narada sting video had surfaced just before the 2016 Assembly elections. Although the opposition parties, including the Left Front-Congress alliance and the BJP, used the matter in a major way in their campaign against the ruling Trinamool Congress, the people of the state brought back Mamata Banerjee and her party with a huge mandate.
Soon after the 2021 Assembly polls, the CBI had arrested senior Trinamool leaders Firhad Hakim, late Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee in connection with the Narada sting video case, all of whom were seen receiving cash in the purported sting video.
–IANS