Bharatiya Janata Party leader Mukul Roy, who was interrogated by the CBI on Saturday in connection with the Narada sting case, made a startling allegations against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, accusing her of hatching a “big conspiracy” to frame him. Talking to media soon after the two-and-a-half-hour long grilling at the agency office in Nizam Palace in South Kolkata, the former railway minister denied any involvement in the case.
Roy was a close aide of Banerjee during his long stint with the Trinamool Congress.
"Mamata Banerjee is hatching a big conspiracy against me. Whoever is being arrested for corruption, they are being told to take the name of Mukul Roy," he said.
The CBI had summoned Roy a day after it arrested IPS officer S.M.H. Mirza on Thursday. Since Roy failed to appear before the agency on Friday, it sent him a second notice, asking him to appear before it on Saturday.
Roy said the chief minister did not want people to cooperate with the CBI.
"They (CBI) called me today. They questioned me. If they need me, they will call me again, and I will come," he said, but evaded a question on whether he was brought face-to-face with Mirza.
Mirza was the Superintendent of Police of Burdwan district when the sting operation was conducted by the Narada News portal.
In the Narada tapes, which had surfaced ahead of the 2016 West Bengal Assembly polls, people resembling senior Trinamool Congress leaders and Mirza are seen accepting money from representatives of a fictitious company in return for favours.
Roy, who was then a Trinamool Congress MP, was purportedly shown conversing with journalist Mathew Samuels who claimed to have conducted the sting operation in 2014.
