ED gets verbal assurance from Calcutta HC against coercive police action in file download case

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court, on Thursday, gave verbal assurance to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of no coercive police action against them in the case of an inadvertent file download by a central agency official from a computer of an office liked to a prime accused in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

The ED official had downloaded 16 personal files while conducting raid and search operations at the office last month, following which an employee of the corporate entity filed a case at the cyber-crime division of Kolkata Police accusing the central agency of planting evidence.

On Tuesday, the central agency approached the single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha, accusing unnecessary harassment in the matter by the city police cops.

After hearing in the matter in the second half of the court session, Justice Sinha observed that since the hard-disc of the computer where the 16 personal files were downloaded had not been confiscated by ED after the raid and search operations, there is no reason to believe that those files were downloaded with any ulterior motive.

Thereafter, she told the state government counsel that she hopes that henceforth the city police will not send any further communiqué to the ED officials in the matter. "There should be an end to charges of harassment," she said.

The ED has already clarified that the files were inadvertently downloaded by one of its officers after the raid and search operations and those 16 files were related to student hostels that he was searching for his daughter who was admitted to a reputed engineering college in state. The officer concerned has been removed from the investigation team and transferred to Guwahati from Kolkata.