KOLKATA: The three Congress MLAs from Jharkhand, nabbed with a huge amount of cash from West Bengal last week, on Friday approached a division bench of the Calcutta High Court against an earlier order by a single-judge bench rejecting their plea for hand over of the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
On Thursday, the single-judge bench of Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya ruled out the plea of the three MLAs for CBI probe and maintained that the matter will continue to be probed by West Bengal Police's CID.
On Friday, Siddharth Luthra, counsel for the petitioners, filed a plea at the division bench of Chief Justice, Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj challenging the decision of Justice Bhattacharya. The division bench has admitted the petition and said that the date of hearing will be fixed soon.
The petitioners also appealed for a hearing on Friday on a fast-track basis. However, the division bench ruled out that plea and said the decision on hearing on a fast-track basis will be decided once the formalities for filing the case are completed.
On Friday, the three MLAs also filed a separate bail plea before the single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh.
On June 20 evening, three Congress MLAs from Jharkhand, namely Irfan Ansari, Rajesh Kacchap and Naman Bixal Kongari, were nabbed by the police from Howrah with cash to the tune of Rs 49 lakh in their vehicles. The CID took over the investigation and the three MLAs approached the high court.
The three MLAs, however, have maintained till date that they got the cash for purchasing sarees from Kolkata for distribution in their respective constituencies on the occasion of the World Tribal Day on August 9.
Meanwhile, the sleuths of CID- West Bengal have also arrested Kolkata-based share- broker, Mahendra Agarwal, who reportedly gave cash to the three MLAs.