IPS officer counters Mukul Roy’s professed innocence in Narada case

Mukul Roy, a file picture.

The Indian Police Service officer S.M.H. Mirza, who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on September 25 in connection with the Narada Sting case in Kolkata, has clearly hinted at senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mukul Roy’s involvement in the case. “The investigation will prove whether he has taken the money or not. Just because he is not seen taking money in the video that does not make it so. He [Mukul Roy] is saying that he has not been seen taking money. That the investigation will prove,” said Mirza, breaking his silence for the first time since his arrest.

Mirza’s statement puts the former Trinamool-turned-BJP leader in a tight spot. Following Mirza’s arrest in the Narada sting case, in which top Trinamool leaders, including MPs, Cabinet Ministers and MLAs were shown accepting cash on camera, Mukul Roy had said, “A lot of footage was shown by each and every television channel, and I can say on my behalf that nobody has been able to point out that I was taking money from anyone.”

The video footage that was shot by Narada News in 2014 and released in 2016, days before the Assembly election in West Bengal, shows Mukul Roy unwilling to take cash directly from the sting operative who was pretending to be an executive of a fictitious company called Impex Infrastructure. “I am not taking it straight away. I will tell my men. You will give it to them,” he is seen to be saying.

Mukul Roy, who was then one of the most powerful leaders in the ruling Trinamool Congress, is also heard directing the operative to get in touch with Mirza, the then superintendent of police in Bardhaman district and known to be very close to Roy. “You talk to Mirza. Everything will be communicated to me through Mirza,” Roy is heard telling the operative. The video footage shows Mirza in his official residence loudly counting the bundles of cash that were being given to him.

A day after arresting Mirza on September 25, the CBI summoned Mukul Roy. The agency interrogated him on September 28, face-to-face with Mirza for nearly three hours. On September 29, the CBI took Mirza to Mukul Roy’s residence to “reconstruct” a scene apparently based on Mirza’s account of how he handed over the money he had received from the sting operative to Mukul Roy.