Narada sting: Trinamool MP ‘admits taking Rs 3 lakh bribe’

KOLKATA: Aparupa Poddar, Trinamool Congress MP from Arambagh, on Thursday reportedly confessed that she had taken money from Narada News boss Mathew Samuel (posing as businessman Santosh Sankaran) before the 2014 Lok Sabha election. During the 10-hour-long interrogation by the Enforcement Directorate at its Salt Lake office, she admitted to taking Rs 3 lakh from Samuel.
Poddar, who on Thursday claimed that she was a greenhorn in politics and was not quite aware of the intricacies, had earlier moved the Calcutta high court, seeking quashing of Narada charges against her. The MP cooperated with the investigators and claimed that she had been working under the guidance of the Khanakul MLA Iqbal Ahmed. She claimed that before she accepted the money from Samuel, she had talked to Ahmed regarding that. While Samuel had allegedly promised to pay her Rs 5 lakh, she was finally handed over Rs 3 lakh.

“We are not getting into whether she had promised any favour in return or not. We will also examine if she was in a position to offer any favour. We will get into that later,” said an ED official.

Meanwhile, a CBI team searched the Dakshineswar residence of Madan Mitra on Thursday. The state former minister later said that the agency was just doing its job. “They came here and called me up before that. There was nothing unusual about it. They have interrogated the boy who was seen with me in the video footage,” he said.