The Calcutta High Court has disposed of the Trinamool Congress’s plea regarding the recent I-PAC raids after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) dropped a bit of a bombshell— they haven't actually seized anything.
The TMC had approached the court with one specific goal— to protect their party data. Their legal team argued that any information scooped up during the January 8 searches at the consultancy’s office and the home of director Pratik Jain should be shielded. However, once the ED stated on record that no seizures were made during those raids, the party’s counsel agreed that the application could be wrapped up.
The hearing wasn't without its fireworks, though. Before the matter was settled, the ED launched a scathing attack on the "maintainability" of the TMC’s petition. The agency’s lawyers argued that the entire plea was built on thin air, pointing out that the person who signed the supporting affidavit wasn't even present during the searches and had no firsthand knowledge of what happened.
The ED dismissed the TMC's concerns as purely speculative, labelling the petition "vague" and "incurable." They argued that since the petitioner was a third party with no connection to the actual premises searched, they had no legal standing to bring the case to court, in the first place.
With the ED’s "categorical statement" now part of the court record, the immediate panic over data theft appears to have cooled, though the political tension surrounding the move remains high.
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