Sushmita Roy, the wife of Sumit Roy, executive assistant to Trinamool Congress general secretary and Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee, on Monday approached a single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court accusing the West Bengal Police of torturing her husband, IANS reported.

Source: IANS via hi INDiA

In her petition before Justice Partha Sarathi Chatterjee, Sushmita Roy sought a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the two cases in which her husband is an accused and which state police are investigating. She also sought protection for her husband in police custody and the transfer of the investigating officers probing the two cases. The petition has been admitted and the matter will come up for hearing on Tuesday.

She has claimed in the petition that her husband was booked in a false case and that police are subjecting him to mental and physical torture to obtain a confession framed by the police. These are her allegations as reported from the petition; they have not been tested in court, and no police response to the petition had been reported.

2Cases against Sumit Roy that his wife wants probed by the CBI
TuesdayHearing listed in the Calcutta High Court
Rs 1 crore+Cash police say was recovered from a TMC office on information allegedly from Roy
16 NovRegular courts resume; his anticipatory bail matter was deferred to a regular bench

Sumit Roy was first arrested in an alleged illegal land-grabbing case at Salboni in West Midnapore district and was subsequently sent to judicial custody. Earlier this month, Diamond Harbour Police in South 24 Parganas district again took him into custody in a multi-crore soil-theft case — a case Nation Press has reported as alleging soil theft worth Rs 300 crore, registered at Kalitala-Ashuti police station.

Source: Nation Press

According to IANS, Diamond Harbour Police earlier this month said they recovered over Rs 1 crore from a Trinamool Congress party office and that the information about the hidden money came from Sumit Roy. Banerjee reacted strongly to that claim, alleging that police were giving his assistant encounter threats and pressuring him to give statements against Banerjee, and claiming the office had been vandalised by BJP-backed goons five months earlier and the recovered cash was planted. Those claims by Banerjee are allegations, and police have not publicly answered them in this reporting.

The case has already travelled through several courts: on Friday, 6 November, a vacation bench of the Calcutta High Court declined to hear Roy's anticipatory bail application and placed it before a regular bench when the court resumes on 16 November, after the Supreme Court had earlier rejected his anticipatory bail plea in the Salboni case, Nation Press reported. Tuesday's hearing on his wife's petition is the next step.