HC stays Kolkata Police probe into Narada sting

The Calcutta High Court today stayed the investigation by Kolkata Police into the Narada sting tapes which purportedly showed people resembling senior Trinamool Congress leaders taking money in exchange for favours.

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice A Banerjee ordered an interim stay into the probe launched by the police till the next date of hearing on August 19.

Passing the order, the chief justice observed that when the matter was already being probed by the high court, a parallel investigation cannot be held by the police.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had on June 17 ordered a probe by Kolkata police into the sting operation.A report by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, on the veracity of the tapes was also received by the court, the contents of which were not made public.

The bench said that advocates on record involved in the matter may go through the report and submit in affidavit form any point they want to raise over its contents.

The high court had sent the Narada sting tapes to Chandigarh CFSL after its counterpart in Hyderabad had expressed its inability to analyse the genuineness of the recordings.

Mathew Samuel, the editor of Narada News, had claimed that the alleged sting operation was recorded using an iPhone 6, transferred to a laptop and then to a pendrive, all of which were sent by the high court to CFSL, Chandigarh for examination of the genuineness of the recordings.