'Harassment' of Custom officials: Indian SC issues notice to Mamata govt

India's Supreme Court has issued a notice to West Bengal government on a petition filed by a Customs official who accused the state police of stopping customs officials at Kolkata airport from checking the baggage of a relative of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi agreed on Friday to hear the matter despite West Bengal raising preliminary objections, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

Setting aside the objections, the bench said "We want to go deeper into this. We want to know what is going on in West Bengal."

Rajkumar Barthwal, who filed a PIL on behalf of the Customs officials, narrated an incident at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata of March 15 in which local police allegedly entered the restricted area of the airport without authority and objected to the questioning of the wife of Trinamool Congress lawmaker Abhishek Banerjee who is Mamata's nephew, reports the New Delhi correspondent.

The local police allegedly forced the Customs officials to allow Abhishek's wife leave through the green channel which is meant for passengers who have no dutiable goods to declare. The customs department stopped Abhishek's wife Rujira Naroola and her sister on their arrival from Bangkok and asked them to get their bags checked.

The petition by Barthwal, a member of Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, said subjects including customs, carriage of passengers by air etc come within the exclusive domain of the federal Indian government. However, officers of West Bengal police, posted at the airport police station, "acting at the behest of the wife of a sitting member of parliament, who is the nephew of Chief Minister of West Bengal, impinged upon the said exclusive domain of the central government in the intervening night" of March 15-16.

The petition alleged the state police officers entered the restricted area inside the airport without any authority and threatened the customs officials with dire consequences. It said although a police complaint was lodged, no action was taken by the police so far.