The audience had many questions but there was no one to answer.

An hour-long show of CCTV footage as part of governor C.V. Ananda Bose’s “Sach Ke Saamne” (in front of truth) initiative triggered more questions than there were answers about the charges of harassment levelled against him by a young Raj Bhavan staffer.

In the packed Marble Hall at Raj Bhavan on Thursday morning, many asked what was the significance of the footage that was shown. Others asked why footage from the portions of the building where the staffer alleged the governor had harassed him was not shown.

Neither governor Bose nor any senior official was present to answer the queries.

This newspaper sent a text message to the governor and emails to his official ID and that of his secretary. There was no response till Thursday night.

The programme was scheduled to start at 11.30am but started almost 40 minutes late.

A senior Raj Bhavan official said the delay was because the governor was busy attending a meeting. The governor, however, did not meet the people who he had invited to watch the footage.

A staff member said Bose was at Raj Bhavan and had asked the staff to ensure the guests did not loiter around the historic building. “Sir (governor) has left an instruction that no one should go inside,” said a staff member, requesting the guests to get back to Marble Hall.

The “show” lasted more than an hour. Footage collected from two cameras near the North Gate of the Raj Bhavan compound showed the woman walking towards the police outpost at 5.33pm on May 2.

However, the police have said they found during their probe that the governor
had called the complainant to his study on the first floor around 4pm.

“According to the complainant, she stepped out of the study but was confined in the EPBX room by some of the staff members for some time. Her phone and bag were snatched in that room. After that she ran downstairs and went into the room of the special secretary to report the matter. Then she came out of the building and went to the outpost,” a Kolkata Police officer said.

The police on Thursday evening said they had not got any of the footage requisitioned from Raj Bhavan. The police had listed the areas whose footage they wanted to see as part of their enquiry into the woman’s allegations.

Sources in Raj Bhavan said there are around 44 operational CCTV cameras in the compound.

Many in the audience were vocal about their disappointment at the gap between what had been promised and what was offered.

“I feel let down by the unprofessionalism with which the programme was organised. It was named ‘Sach Ke Saamne’, but the footage did not give any clarification at all. What was this programme all about?” said one of the visitors, Maidul Islam, political scientist at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

“It started late and I could not watch the full footage. The only silver lining was that I got an opportunity to visit Raj Bhavan, which I never did before,” he said.

Another visitor, who refused to be identified, questioned the attempts at drawing a curtain on what happened inside.

There were others, too, like Tushar Kanti Banerjee, a teacher from a school in Ranigunge, West Burdwan, who said he had a “long association” with Raj Bhavan and found “nothing abnormal” in the footage. “I did not find the girl to be agitated or crying. Other staff members were also behaving normally. I feel the allegations are baseless,” he said.

Raj Bhavan officials said they received more than 70 emails and phone calls to enroll themselves, but only 30-odd turned up on Thursday.

All those who had turned up for the 11.30am show were asked to write down their names, phone numbers and the name of the organisations or addresses from where they were coming.

As this newspaper was enrolling at the desk, a staff member came over from a distance and quietly acknowledged that he had been reading The Telegraph, making it apparent that everything and everyone was being watched.

‘No urgent hearing’: A division bench of Calcutta High Court headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam on Thursday refused to urgently hear a PIL seeking action against Kolkata Police for tarnishing the image of governor C.V. Ananda Bose by accusing him of molesting a Raj Bhavan staffer. Tirthankar De, a lawyer, had wanted the urgent hearing as it involved the “prestige” of the governor. The bench declared it was not a PIL that the court should hear urgently.

The chief justice also remarked: “The issue cannot be the basis of PIL.”