Court slams Partha’s lawyer for ‘bid to select bench’
Times of India | 6 December 2024
Kolkata: The special PMLA court on Thursday admonished former education minister Partha Chatterjee's lawyer for "trying to select the bench and "wasting the court's time". Judge Prashanta Mukhopadhyay also said Chatterjee's bail petition and ED's plea to move the case to special PMLA court number 3 would be heard simultaneously on Dec 16.
A lawyer appearing for Chatterjee argued against ED's case transfer plea, to which the judge said: "Why are you so concerned about the bench? You are unnecessarily wasting the court's time. You do not decide which court will hear the case."
Chatterjee, now in CBI custody, had submitted a bail application to the court on Nov 5. The next day, ED submitted a plea to transfer the predicate offence to special PMLA court 3, where connected ED cases were being heard. "The judge has accepted the plea, and both submissions will be heard on Dec 16," Biplab Goswami, another lawyer of Chatterjee's, said.
A day earlier, his counsel Mukul Rohatgi faced criticism during bail proceedings in Supreme Court, where the judges characterised the former minister as corrupt "on the face of it".
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