HC directs Abhishek Banerjee to appear before CID by 6 pm, grants 2 week arrest shield

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday ordered Trinamool Congress All India General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee to physically appear before the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at its Bhavani Bhavan headquarters by 6:00 PM today. The high-stakes directive comes after the Diamond Harbour MP repeatedly avoided three consecutive investigative summonses related to an ongoing signature forgery scandal. Justice Kaushik Chanda heavily reprimanded the parliamentarian for his evasive conduct during the high-profile hearing, sternly demanding to know within a ten-minute window exactly when he intended to cooperate with the law.

Despite forcing his immediate compliance, the High Court threw a vital legal lifeline to the embattled leader by granting him conditional interim protection from arrest for the next 21 days. Sources reveal that Abhishek Banerjee had been lingering in New Delhi simply out of intense fear of immediate detention upon landing in West Bengal. With his return flight to Kolkata scheduled to touch down at 4:00 PM on Thursday, the court explicitly structured the 6:00 PM deadline to give him just enough time to travel straight from the airport to the interrogation table. While he cannot escape a intense questioning session tonight, the 21-day safety net shields him from any immediate custodial crackdown.

The dramatic signature forgery scandal traces its origins back to the high-voltage political meetings that followed the recent West Bengal Assembly election results. On May 6, Mamata Banerjee convened a meeting with party MLAs at her Kalighat residence, where veteran leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay’s name was proposed and approved as the Leader of the Opposition. However, the official proposal was not immediately submitted to the state Assembly. During the mandatory swearing-in ceremonies on May 13 and 14, all elected Trinamool MLAs signed the official legislative register as per standard parliamentary procedure.

The crisis exploded into public view when the party leadership submitted a final resolution document on May 19 bearing the purported signatures of 70 supporting MLAs. Upon cross-examination, the Secretary of the Assembly noticed blatant, irreconcilable discrepancies between the signatures on the May 14 register and the ones submitted in the May 19 political resolution. Following a formal police complaint, the case was handed over to the state CID, where several rebel legislators directly pointed fingers at Abhishek Banerjee as the primary architect behind the alleged document manipulation, making his interrogation a critical component of the ongoing criminal inquiry.