Kolkata Messi event case: HC’s order of interim protection to Aroop Biswas challenged at higher bench
Kolkata, June 16 : An earlier order by a single-judge vacation bench of the Calcutta High Court last week granting interim protection from coercive police action to former West Bengal Minister Aroop Biswas till August 17 was on Tuesday challenged before a division bench of the same court.
The matter relates to alleged irregularities during Lionel Messi’s ‘GOAT India Tour’ event at the Yuva Bharati Krirangan in Salt Lake on December 13 last year, where crowd management issues reportedly led to chaos and the footballer’s early exit due to security concerns.
The state government had recently initiated an investigation into the matter, as Biswas, the former sports and power minister in the previous Mamata Banerjee-led cabinet, was accused of being the reason behind the mismanagement.
Thereafter, Biswas approached the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharya, seeking interim protection from coercive police action, including arrest.
On June 10, Justice Bhattacharya’s bench granted Biswas interim protection till August 17 but maintained that the police will continue the investigation as per the law and in the event of any notice being issued, the petitioner must appear before the investigating agency.
Now, the organiser of the Messi event last year, Satadru Dutta, on Tuesday, approached the division bench of Calcutta High Court’s Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen challenging the single-judge vacation bench’s order granting interim protection to Biswas.
The petition by Dutta has been accepted, and the matter will come up for hearing this week.
During the hearing at the single-judge vacation bench last week, the counsel of Dutta, who was arrested during the previous Trinamool Congress regime because of the mismanagement, informed the court that while 70,000 tickets were issued, Biswas alone took 22,000 tickets for people in his Assembly constituency of Tollygunge in the southern outskirts of Kolkata.
Dutta’s counsel also alleged that Biswas sold such tickets at premium rates to a number of clubs.
In fact, the police recently started an investigation into the matter based on a complaint filed by Dutta and also registered an FIR against Biswas.
Recently, Biswas’s brother, Swarup Biswas, was arrested by the police on various charges like corruption, extortion and inappropriate behaviour towards women supporting staff in the Bengali film industry.