Jail superintendent fined for giving special treatment to coal scam accused

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday imposed a financial penalty on the Superintendent of Presidency Special Correctional Home in south Kolkata for giving special treatment to Vikas Mishra, one of the prime accused in the multi-crore coal smuggling scam .

A division bench of Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta directed the correction home Superintendent Debashish Chakraborty to either deposit Rs 10,000 with the office of the Registrar General of the Calcutta High Court within the next 48 hours or face seven days imprisonment.

“You are in charge of one of the prime correction homes of the state. If such things happen, then I must say that there is a definite attempt to influence the process of the probe. It is evident that you have done everything in your senses and intentionally. Even after the court ordered Vikas Mishra to be jailed, you have sent him to hospital. You are a government servant and you should have performed your duties according to law. This is not expected for a government servant like you,” Justice Bagchi observed.

Although Chakraborty apologised to the court on this count, the division bench imposed the financial penalty on him.

In September last year, the same division bench issued a contempt of notice against Chakraborty for violating the court’s order for periodical medical examination of Mishra.

Mishra, the first person to be arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the coal smuggling scam in April 2021, was then housed at the Presidency Special Correctional Home.

After the CBI informed the court at that point of time that Mishra had been frequently avoiding interrogation on medical grounds, the division bench ordered that a medical officer designated by the CBI should visit the correctional home at an interval of 48 hours to medically examine Mishra.

Thereafter the CBI again informed the court that despite being found medically fit by the agency designated medical officer, the correctional home Superintendent had been regularly allowing Mishra to get admitted at the correctional home hospital which hampered the interrogation process.