BJP MLAs who were summoned to the Calcutta police headquarters at Lalbazar in connection with their alleged insult to the National Anthem moved Calcutta High Court on Monday with an appeal to quash the FIR against 11 of them, lodged with Hare Street police station.
The court passed an interim order directing Calcutta police not to take any coercive action against the MLAs before Thursday, December 7, a day after the next hearing of the case is scheduled.
Sankar Ghosh, the BJP MLA from Siliguri, and others moved the single-judge bench of Justice Jay Sengupta on Monday morning with an appeal to quash the FIR.
Lawyer Rajdeep Mazumdar, who appeared for the BJP legislators, submitted in the court that the singing of the anthem was a deliberate
ploy by Trinamul MLAs to disrupt the BJP MLAs’ sloganeering.
The Trinamul MLAs had alleged that the singing of the National Anthem was disrupted when some BJP MLAs started shouting “chor chor (thief thief)” and thus, insulted the anthem, inside the Assembly compound.
Based on the complaint by the Trinamul MLAs, Calcutta police had registered an FIR against 11 BJP MLAs last week.
Advocate Kishore Datta, who represented the state, raised the question during
his submission whether it would be appropriate for
the court to interfere as three BJP MLAs and 10 BJP workers had already been questioned in connection with the
case.
Justice Sengupta said as the version of the BJP MLAs on the sequence of events was not matching with that of the Trinamul MLAs, it was important to ascertain the exact sequence.