Calcutta HC declines urgent hearing on plea by Abhishek Banerjee aide's wife alleging custodial torture

Kolkata: A single-judge vacation bench of the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday declined an urgent hearing on a petition from Sushmita Roy, wife of Sumit Roy, the Executive Assistant to the Trinamool Congress General Secretary and the party’s Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha member, Abhishek Banerjee. She had accused the police of torturing her husband, who is now in police custody.

In her petition, filed on Monday, Sushmita Roy sought a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into two cases involving her husband, currently under investigation by the West Bengal Police.

She also alleged custodial torture and sought judicial intervention and an investigation by a judicial committee by a retired judge of the Calcutta High Court.

However, as the matter came up for hearing at the single-judge vacation bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya on Tuesday afternoon, the judge refused to hear the matter on an urgent basis and instead ruled that it will be heard by a regular bench after the normal functioning of the court resumes on November 16, at the end of the ongoing festival vacation.

Sumit Roy was first arrested in an alleged illegal land-grabbing case at Salboni in West Midnapore district and subsequently sent to judicial custody. Earlier this month, he was again taken into custody by Diamond Harbour Police in South 24 Parganas district in a multi-crore soil-theft case.

The controversy gained further attention after police recovered more than Rs 1 crore from a Trinamool Congress party office in the Diamond Harbour Police District. Investigators claimed the recovery was based on information provided by Sumit Roy.

Abhishek Banerjee gave a strong reaction to the police claims and alleged that police were giving Sumit encounter threats and putting pressure on his Executive Assistant to give statements against him.

Banerjee also claimed that the party office from where the cash was recovered was vandalised allegedly by BJP-backed goons five months ago, and the cash recovered from there was actually planted by the police.

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