Narada Tapes: IPS Meerza sent to judicial custody till Oct 15

New Delhi: After having served his purpose to the Central Bureau of Investigation, suspended IPS officer SMH Meerza was on Monday remanded to 14 days in judicial custody till October 15 in the Narada tapes corruption scandal, as a Kolkata court dismissed his bail plea. Meerza's CBI custody ended on Monday when the agency sought that he be sent to judicial custody.

According to sources in the know, Meerza was arrested when after several rounds of questioning, he was unable to explain accepting a wad of cash from the sting operator, Mathew Samuel.

The day he was arrested, the CBI summoned senior BJP leader Mukul Roy for questioning and on the first day of his interrogation, the agency confronted the politician with the suspended bureaucrat.

According to the agency, the Narada tapes had shown Roy asking Samuel to hand over the cash meant for him to IPS officer SMH Meerza. The tapes also showed Roy telling Samuel that he would not be accepting the money himself and that a meeting with Meerza had been set up. In a subsequent tape, Meerza was shown accepting Rs 5 lakh in cash.

The CBI had also taken Meerza to Roy's residence in Kolkata on Sunday afternoon, in an attempt to recreate scenes from the Narada tapes. Both were also brought face-to-face and interrogated by investigators.

However, outside the CBI's offices in Kolkata, Roy had claimed that the recent scrutiny on him was somehow orchestrated by TMC chief Mamata Banerjee. In fact, he had also claimed that he had "nothing to do with the Narada scam".

The CBI has, however, not yet sought sanction to prosecute Roy, who was an MP at the time of the incident. Roy had joined the ruling BJP within four months of the FIR being registered.