Mamata's troops crowd CBI office after Sudip's arrest

Kolkata: Several Trinamul Congress MPs and MLAs reached the CBI office here on Tuesday, hours after the arrest of TMC parliamentary party leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay by the investigation agency in connection with the alleged Rose Valley chit fund scam.

However, only the MPs were allowed to go upstairs where Mr Bandyopadhyay was kept after his arrest, TMC sources said. Of the MPs who descended on the CGO Complex in Salt Lake included Mukul Roy, Dinesh Trivedi, Saugata Roy, Subrata Bakshi, Kalyan Banerjee, Derek O’Brien, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Dola Sen

The accompanying MLAs were Partha Chatterjee, Firhad Hakim, Jyotipriya Mullick, Sashi Panja, Sabyasachi Dutta, Sujit Bose and a few others who began arriving at 4.30 pm. Mr Bandyopadhyay’s wife, MLA Nayna Bandyopadhyay, came to the CBI office to meet him. Mr Bandyopadhyay was first taken to the crime branch office’s first floor before being taken to Dum Dum airport to catch a late night flight to Bhubaneswar.

In September 2014, members of Trinamul Congress women’s wing led by Chandrima Bhattacharya had organised a two-day dharna outside CGO Complex to protest the Centre’s alleged misuse of CBI to what it claimed was to “settle political scores”. It was different on Tuesday, though.  “No, we have not come here to sit on a dharna, but to show solidarity to our senior leader,” urban development minister Firhad Hakim said.

Mr Chatterjee made it clear that the TMC delegation had visited the CBI office “on the directive of party supremo Mamata Banerjee”. A small team of TMC leaders was allowed to meet Mr Bandopadhyay.