Calcutta HC adjourns hearing of petitions on ED raids at I-PAC sites till Jan 14

Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Friday adjourned the scheduled hearing of cases related to the Enforcement Directorate's search and seizure operations at political consultancy firm I-PAC's office on account of unmanageable chaos inside the courtroom.

Justice Suvra Ghosh, in whose court the matter was scheduled to be heard, adjourned the hearing till January 14 after repeated requests to those not connected with the petitions to leave the courtroom fell on deaf ears.

The court was scheduled to hear dual petitions by the ED and the Trinamool Congress in connection with the dramatic developments witnessed on Thursday after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee landed up at the agency's operation venues and alleged that the investigators were trying to seize TMC's sensitive data ahead of the upcoming high-stakes state polls.

While the TMC in its writ petition sought judicial intervention to restrain the ED from "prejudice, misuse and dissemination" of seized data during the search operations, the agency moved the bench alleging interference in its investigation and prayed for transferring the probe into Thursday's developments to the CBI.

ED has made CM Mamata Banerjee a respondent in its petition, along with some officers of the state.

The TMC petition has been filed against the Union of India.