A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Thursday extended the stay till August 4 on filing of an FIR and starting a CID probe into ‘rape and shoot’ remarks of Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul as directed by the a single Bench of the High Court earlier this week.
There was a heated argument before the Division Bench Justice Girish Chandra Gupta and Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty on an appeal filed by the West Bengal government challenging an order of the Single Bench.
Appearing for the State government, senior counsel of the West Bengal government Kalyan Banerjee said the offence committed by Mr. Paul was non-cognisable and the police had not filed an FIR in the matter.
He said that complaint made by the petitioner was entered into a general diary and the State was making a preliminary inquiry. Mr Banerjee said the observations made by the Single Bench that the police were influenced were not supported by facts.
During the proceedings, Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty asked Mr. Banerjee whether in his personal capacity the comments made by Mr Paul did not shock his conscience.
“As a man and as a senior Counsel, I do not approve the statement of Mr. Paul.... I dislike it,” Mr Banerjee said.
Justice Girish Chandra Gupta also made certain observations. He asked counsel of the petitioner Aniruddha Chatterjee that if the police were not acting, what made him think that the CID would act. “If the State does not want to prosecute anybody, nothing can be done,” Justice Gupta said, adding that the court could never step into the shoes of a prosecutor.
In his argument, Mr. Chatterjee said that police did not act on the complaint of his client Biplab Kumar Chowdhury, and when powerful people were involved, investigating agencies went slow. The State’s counsel described the decision of the Single Bench as “erroneous” and said that the court had exceeded his jurisdiction.
In his order, Justice Dipakar Datta had expressed regret over the “apathy and indifference of the police”. The order described the Trinamool MP’s speech as “outrageous and surpasses all bounds of civility” and added that he had “an evil tendency to become a law unto himself”.
Mr. Paul in his speech before a group of supporters in Nadia district had said that he would gun down his rivals and let loose his “boys” to rape the Marxist women.
The matter will come up for hearing on Friday.
