A team of the state CID visited the Assembly on Monday and interacted with officials as part of its investigation into alleged forgery of the signatures of Trinamool MLAs.

The state investigating agency had earlier questioned Abhishek Banerjee, Diamond Harbour MP and Trinamool Congress national general secretary, in connection with the party’s resolution book, which allegedly contained forged signatures of legislators who claimed they had not attended the meeting.

Sources said this was CID’s first visit to the Assembly in connection with this probe.

The sleuths are yet to locate the original resolution book, sources said.

Last week, a CID team entered the premises of the residence of former chief minister Mamata Banerjee in connection with the same case. The party had moved court against the CID after this.

The petition challenging the CID raid came up for hearing before Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya of Calcutta High Court on Monday.

The judge, however, declined to hear the case as another case on the same issue was being heard by Justice Kaushik Chanda.

In that case, Abhishek had demanded quashing of the proceedings drawn against him by the CID in connection with the alleged signature
forgery case.

Following Justice Chanda’s order, Abhishek appeared before CID investigators for questioning on Friday. The court has asked the investigating agency not to take
any coercive action against him for around two weeks from the date of the order on June 11.

The allegations stemmed from a complaint lodged by now-expelled Trinamool MLA Ritabrata Banerjee. He had filed a complaint at Hare Street police station alleging the forgery of signatures. An FIR was drawn based on that complaint. Later, the CID took over the investigation.

Over the past few days, CID teams have visited several Trinamool MLAs to verify their signatures against those on the document under scrutiny.

Ritabrata and fellow MLA Sandipan Saha were suspended from the party after they filed the complaint.

Both are now part of a group that has pledged to help the Suvendu Adhikari government usher in development in Bengal. They have collated the support of most party MLAs and have staked a claim to be formally declared the main Opposition party in the Bengal Assembly.

The CID has collected specimen signatures from some Trinamool MLAs who later came out to claim that their signatures had been forged in the document that the party submitted to the Assembly with a resolution nominating Ballygunge MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as the leader of the Opposition.