Calcutta High Court orders forensic test on rada sting tapes

Kolkata, April 29: The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered a forensic test on the rada sting tapes, which purportedly caught several leaders of the West Bengal’s ruling Trimool Congress taking bribes, to be conducted by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) at Hyderabad. The bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice A. Banerjee passed the order while hearing public interest litigations seeking an independent agency probe into the sting. The lab has been asked to conduct the test “as expeditiously as possible” but not later than four weeks, and hand over the confidential report to the director of a court-appointed special committee, who would then place it before the court.

The orders comes a day ahead of the crucial fifth phase of the assembly polls involving 53 constituencies spread over the three districts of Kolkata, South 24 Pargas and Hooghly. As many as four of those “caught” in the sting, are in the fray in this phase. Conducted by rada News chief executive officer Mathew Samuel, the entire sting was carried using an iPhone and subsequently transferred to a laptop and then a pen drive.

While the phone and the pen drive were handed over to a court appointed three-member special committee, Samuel had refused to part with the laptop, contending the committee needed to deposit the cost of the laptop before he can give them the device. The bench ordered the director of the special committee to hand over persolly, the iPhone and the pen drive to the CFSL Hyderabad director. Expressing displeasure over Samuel putting up a condition to hand over the laptop, the court directed him to persolly handover the device to the CFSL director. The court had constituted the special committee to take possession of the footage and the recording device from him in Delhi, after Samuel in an affidavit, affirmed there was a “threat to his life” if he came to Kolkata persolly to hand over the tapes. (IANS)