A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court concluded on Friday its hearing on the appeal filed by the State government challenging the order of Single Bench which ordered criminal proceedings against Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul for his ‘rape and shoot’ remarks.
The Bench of Justice Girish Chandra Gupta and Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty said the order would be given on August 13. The court extended its stay on the order of Single Bench till then.
During the proceedings in the court, State government counsel Kaylan Banerjee said an MP could not be treated differently from an ordinary citizen by a judge.
Mr. Banerjee said the writ petition on the which the Single Bench gave its order is “untenable” and the court committed an error in interpreting the section under 153 A of the IPC.
The Single Bench in his order charged Mr. Paul under 153 A of the IPC, which refers to promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.
Mr. Banerjee also pointed out that on receiving a complaint from the petitioner, Biplab Kumar Chowdhury who filed the writ petition before the Single Bench, the Nakasipara police approached a local television channel to obtain an unedited copy of the video footage of Mr. Paul speech. The State counsel said the police had not received any response from the television channel yet.
Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Aniruddha Chatterjee said the argument of the State and the argument of the Tapas Paul counsel were identical and it seemed that the State was defending him.
Justice Gupta made the observation that anyone on the street saying something and a person holding a position saying the same thing are two different things.
The Judge also asked the counsel of the petitioner that what was the guarantee that State’s Criminal Investigation Department would not be influenced in its investigation.
In its order, the Single Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta had directed West Bengal’s Director General of Police to “issue appropriate instructions to the DIG, C.I.D. for a free, fair, proper probe into the FIR”. Justice Datta had also made caustic observation on the law and order situation in the State in the order.
