Suspended Trinamool MP Kunal Ghosh being taken for a CT scan after an alleged suicide attempt. (Press Trust of India)
An alleged suicide attempt in jail by suspended Trinamool MP Kunal Ghosh, an accused in the Saradha chit fund scam, has gripped Bengal politics. Mr Ghosh consumed over 50 sleeping pills late last night, the police said on Friday morning. But Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said he may not have overdosed after all; only one empty strip had been found.
"Perhaps he did not take as many pills as reported," Mr Banerjee told the state assembly, claiming that he had walked from his cell to the police car.
Images of Mr Ghosh on a stretcher, being taken for a CT scan, appeared to suggest that his condition was a little more serious.
Arrested last November, Mr Ghosh reportedly told jail officials at around 2.30 am this morning that he had taken 58 pills. To doctors, he reportedly told it was closer to 30 to 40 pills.
The jail superintendent, doctor and guards have been suspended. How Mr Ghosh accessed so many of the pills he had reportedly been prescribed for insomnia is being investigated.
Mr Ghosh, who was the chief of the Saradha Group's media operations, has named top Trinamool leaders but has been discredited by his party.
On Monday, he had threatened in court that he will take his own life if the "real beneficiaries" of the chit fund scam were not arrested.
"The investigation is being influenced. It is unacceptable that I am rotting in jail while those who were involved roam free. I am giving three days; if action is not taken I will commit suicide," Mr Ghosh had said.
Mr Ghosh was the only Trinamool leader named in the Central Bureau of Investigation's first charge sheet in the Saradha case.
The Saradha Group operated a Ponzi scheme offering massive returns of 40 per cent and more until it collapsed last year, leaving lakhs of small investors bankrupt in West Bengal and Odisha.
Mr Ghosh has often suggested that the CBI should question his party chief Mamata Banerjee along with him. The Left alleged a conspiracy.
"If anything happens to Kunal Ghosh, the state government will be responsible," said SK Mishra of the opposition CPI-M.