High Court in Kolkata stays bail of 2 ministers of Mamata's cabinet

The Calcutta High Court last night stayed the bail granted by a trial court to two senior West Bengal Ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, ruling TMC legislator Madan Mitra and former Kolkata mayor Sovan Chattopadhyay who were arrested yesterday morning by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with a five-year-old case related to alleged graft.

The bail order of the special CBI court in Bankshall in central Kolkata was stayed by the High Court in a late evening hearing when the lower court's relief to the four arrested politicians was challenged by the probe agency.

The four TMC leaders will now be in jail custody till the next hearing in the case on Wednesday, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

The arrested leaders were produced at Bankshall Court through a virtual hearing from local CBI head office at Nizam Palace in south Kolkata earlier in the evening and granted bail.

The CBI then moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the move and their bail order was stayed.

Earlier in the day, soon after the arrests took place, hundreds of TMC activists took out protest rallies in the city and elsewhere in West Bengal, flouting Covid lockdown guidelines.