Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said "vendetta politics" was at play amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic, days after state ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, MLA Madan Mitra and former party leader Sovan Chatterjee were arrested by the CBI in connection with the probe into Narada sting operation.
The Trinamool supremo also said that she has full faith in the country's judiciary, and was absolutely certain that justice will be served in the case.
"I am not willing to talk about the matter as it is sub-judice. But the manner in which they have been treated is not correct. This is nothing but political vendetta at play. As a political leader, Firhad Hakim has worked hard to ease woes of people amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"He is the person who participated in the vaccine trial, without thinking about the risk associated with it," she said at the secretariat on Thursday.
The sting operation, purportedly conducted by Mathew Samuel of Narada TV in 2014, had caught on camera people resembling TMC ministers, MPs and MLAs receiving money from representatives of a fictitious company in lieu of favours. Ms Banerjee further said, "I am sure that justice will be meted out to them. As Mr Firhad could not undertake necessary work for the last couple of days, I need to check whether bodies (of COVID-19 victims) were being cleared or not."
Later, while returning from the secretariat, Ms Banerjee paid a visit to Mr Hakim's Chelta residence.
She interacted with Mr Hakim's doctor-daughter Shabba Hakim, who had met the minister two days ago at the Presidency correctional home.
Ms Banerjee had on Monday rushed to the CBI office in Kolkata, shortly after the central agency made the arrests.
The Chief Minister, who stayed put at the CBI's Nizam Palace office for around six hours, had dared the agency's sleuths to arrest her when told to leave the premises.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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