Five accused in Kolkata carcass meat case get bail

Kolkata : Five out of 12 people arrested for their alleged involvement in the carcass meat selling racket here were on Wednesday grated bail after the state CID failed to produce a charge sheet in the case, 90 days after their arrest.

Two more accused were earlier granted bail on the same grounds.

"Neither a charge sheet has been filed against any of these accused nor the forensic test report of the seized meat could be submitted to the court yet. So the prosecution today (Wednesday) asked the court to accept the bail plea of the accused persons and grant them conditional bail," the state counsel said outside the Alipore court here.

Sarafat Hossain, one of the main accused in the carcass meat case and former CPI-M councillor Manik Mukherjee were among those who were given bail during the day, he said.

The CID said it could not file the charge sheet due to the non-availability of certain reports.

"Five out of 10 people who were kept in jail custody in the carcass meat case were given bail today. The charge sheet could not be filed due to the non-availability of evasion reports," Deputy Inspector General, CID, Nishad Parvez told IANS.

Police had earlier this year, busted a racket involved in processing the flesh of carcasses collected from dumping grounds in Kolkata and adjoining suburbs and selling it to local restaurants and departmental stores. Huge quantity of rotten meat was seized from a city cold storage as part of the investigation.

A dozen people were arrested including the kingpin Biswanath Garai, 52, who also owned the cold storage in north Kolkata's Narkeldanga.

CID took over the probe into the meat racket in May.