AGARTALA, Feb 1 - Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Tripura Assembly and former Finance Minister Badal Chowdhury was granted bail by the High Court of Tripura today after 105 days of incarceration.
The bail plea of Chowdhury, who was a State minister for 17 years, came up for hearing before the bench of Justice Arindam Lodh, who granted him bail, giving the much-needed relief to the CPI(M) leader.
The former minister was arrested for his alleged role in the Rs 162-crore scam in the Public Works Department (PWD) in October last year.
All the projects were duly completed and are currently in use, but in one case the department had not obtained the Cabinet approval in 2008-2009. This was held against Chowdhury and he was arrested along with the then Chief Engineer, Subal Bhowmik, who was also released on bail earlier.
Chowdhury was treated shabbily by the police in spite of his critical health condition. He was taken into custody while he was undergoing treatment at the ILS Hospital and lodged at the police lock-up of West Agartala Police Station.
After hearing arguments of the prosecution as well as the defence, the court decided to grant him bail, directing him to cooperate with the investigation and not to tamper with evidence or influence witnesses.
No charge sheet has been filed against Chowdhury so far. He was represented in the court by his lawyers Purusottam Roy Barman, Raghunath Mookhejee and Arindam Bhattacharjee, who expressed happiness at today�s development.
Chowdhury had been in judicial custody for 86 days and 19 days in hospital.
Interestingly, the third accused in this case � the then Principal Secretary YP Singh � has not been arrested yet, which has raised many eyebrows. It has been learnt that Singh may file his anticipatory bail plea in the Supreme Court.
