Calcutta Nov. 26: Calcutta High Court today granted bail to a Hooghly CPM leader’s son in a rape case, saying he had been “falsely implicated”.

“This court primarily finds that the petitioner (Arijit Adhikari) had been falsely implicated in the rape case and so it is granting him bail. But our observation should not influence the trial of the case,” said the division bench of Justices K. S. Ahluwaliah and A. K. Mondal in its order.

Arijit’s lawyer, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, alleged that the 22-year-old was implicated in the case to “tarnish the image” of his father Ganesh Adhikari, the zonal committee secretary of the CPM in Arambagh.

Arijit was arrested from his home after a 36-year-old homemaker lodged a complaint with Arambagh police station in February accusing Arijit and his friend Raghunath of raping her on September 28 last year when her husband was not at home.

In her complaint, she had said that both Arijit and Raghunath used to come to her residence and they had become “friends”. Her husband works with the health department.

“On the day of incident, Arijit and Raghunath came to my place when my husband was in office. They said they wanted to have some tea. I went to the kitchen. Arijit then embraced me from behind and Raghunath pressed a handkerchief with chloroform on my face. When I lost my senses, they raped me,” the woman claimed in her complaint.

Raghunath was also arrested on the basis of the complaint. But he has not prayed for bail before Calcutta High Court.

Arijit had moved the high court after the Hooghly district court rejected his plea.

Bhattacharya also alleged before the high court that the district Trinamul had engineered the case against his client only to “tarnish the image of his father, who is a very popular leader of the CPM in the locality”.

Trinamul leaders in Hooghly refused comment.

Bhattacharya claimed his client was “a well-known weightlifter who is holding seventh position in the state”.

“He is languishing in jail for 40 days without committing any crime. Why did the homemaker lodge the complaint two-and-half months after the alleged incident?” Bhattacharya questioned.

Bhattacharya is a former mayor and the vice-president of CPM-dominated Democratic Lawyers’ Federation.

The state counsel, A. Javed, in his attempt to convince the court that Arijit had committed the crime, said: “After the incident, the woman was in trauma for a long time. So she could not lodge the complaint soon after the incident,” Javed said.

The bench, after hearing both the parties, accepted Bhattacharya’s submission and granted bail to Arijit.