The CBI special court in West Burdwan’s Asansol on Saturday extended the custody of arrested Birbhum Trinamul chief Anubrata Mandal in the cattle-smuggling case by another four days after hearing counsels of both sides for an hour.
Mondal will remain in CBI custody till August 24, when he will be produced in court again.Mondal, arrested on August 12, was brought to the court as his 10 days in CBI custody ended on Saturday.
Workers of the Congress, the BJP and Trinamul face-to-face on court compound. While hundreds of Trinamul workers chanted “Joy Bangla” and demanded Mondal’s release, Congress and BJP workers shouted “goru chor (cattle thief)”.
The presence of a large number of Trinamul workers on the court compound was significant given chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s public support for Mondal.“He has been arrested by the CBI on false charges at the behest of the BJP. We demand his release,” said Sujit Mukherjee, a Trinamul leader from West Burdwan.
Inside the courtroom, Mondal’s lawyers Sandipan Ganguly and Anirban Guha Thakurta moved a bail petition citing the leader’s ill health and claimed that the CBI failed to establish any direct link of their client in the cattle-smuggling case.
Demanding four days of custody, CBI lawyers Kalicharan Mishra and Rakesh Kumar described Mondal as a “strongman of the ruling party” and “influential”.One of the CBI lawyers told the court that if Mondal was granted bail there were chances of evidence being destroyed and witnesses influenced.
The CBI lawyer also said that Mondal was not cooperating with the investigators since his arrest. The CBI lawyer told the court that several unaccounted properties in the name of Mondal's family members have been unearthed during the course of investigations for which the CBI need to interrogate Mondal and his daughter Sukanya.
“I don’t own any anonymous property at all,” he told a reporter as he was being brought out of the CBI office in Calcutta. On if he was assisting the CBI, he said: “100 per cent.”
One of Mondal’s lawyers said they had argued that the logic of non-cooperation by CBI was not relevant after keeping him in custody for 10 days.
“If a person did not cooperate for 10 days, what would the agency gain by keeping him in their custody for four more days?” the lawyer said. But CBI lawyers said that during a raid on a rice mill in Bolpur on Friday they recovered documents that need to be crosschecked with Mondal.On August 17, a CBI team had gone to Mondal's Bolpur residence to interrogate Sukanya.
But she refused to speak to investigators citing her mental state after her father’s arrest and her mother’s death last year. Mondal’s lawyer claimed before the court that fixed deposits and other properties in the name of Sukanya and her late mother Chhabi were inherited by Mondal’s in-laws.
After the hearing, CBI judge Rajesh Chakraborty denied the bail plea and remanded Mondal in CBI custody for four days. The judge also wanted to know about his health from Mondal to which he told the judge that he was regularly taking medicines prescribed by SSKM doctors.Later, Mondal was taken back to Calcutta by the CBI.