KOLKATA: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Calcutta High Court registrar general to report within four days whether Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay gave an interview to a news channel regarding the pending case in the high-profile school job bribery case in the West. Bengal.
A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandasooth and Justice PS Narasimha took a stern note of Justice Gangopadhyay’s interview to a news channel and said that “a judge has no business to give interviews on pending cases”. The bench adjourned TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee’s petition to a day later after asking the high court registrar general to file a report on or before the judge’s direction.

On April 17, the Supreme Court stayed the Calcutta High Court’s April 13 order to the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate to interrogate Banerjee and Kuntal Ghosh, the accused in the case, and file a report based on it.

Earlier, a single-judge bench of Calcutta High Court Justice Gangopadhyay had directed the West Bengal Police not to file a case against CBI and Enforcement Directorate officials.

The High Court took note of a public speech by Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in which Ghosh, the accused in the case, allegedly said that he was being pressured by the Central Intelligence Agency to name him in the case.