Former sports minister Aroop Biswas moved the high court on Monday, hoping to quash a case against him.

But the court offered no immediate relief.

Former advocate-general Kishore Datta prayed that the FIR against Biswas — accused of extortion and other offences related to a Lionel Messi event at the Salt Lake stadium last year — be quashed. He also requested an urgent hearing.

The bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharya asked Datta to file a petition, based on which the merit of the case will be decided.

Biswas, the state’s minister of sports and youth affairs during the Messi visit, has been accused of cheating, extortion, criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy and common intention related to the vandalism that followed a botched-up programme on December 13.

The organiser of the event, Satadru Dutta, who was arrested the same evening and is now out on bail, lodged a complaint against Biswas at Bidhannagar (south) police station, accusing him of demanding thousands of complimentary tickets/accreditation cards and threatening Satadru that the programme would be derailed if he failed to
deliver.

Biswas, according to Dutta’s allegations, “forcefully took around 22,000 complimentary tickets from the complainant and later which were sold in the black market”.

The lawyers assisting Datta started the process of filing the petition on Monday.

The next hearing date had not been announced till Monday evening.

Summons skip

Biswas skipped the summons issued by Bidhannagar city police and did not appear for interrogation on Monday.

Bidhannagar police had issued a fresh summons to Biswas on Sunday, asking him to appear before the police, saying that his earlier prayer seeking a 14-day break on medical grounds was not justified in the absence of any doctor’s prescription supporting his claims.

This was the second summons that Biswas skipped.

Earlier this month, Biswas submitted a prayer for anticipatory bail before the Barasat court, apprehending arrest.

The hearing on that case is pending.

The move to pray for the anticipatory bail came two days after Bidhannagar city police turned event organiser Satadru Dutta’s complaint into an FIR and named Biswas as the prime suspect.

He has been charged with non-bailable sections.

Sources in the state home department said the complaint lodged on May 19 at Bidhannagar (south) police station was turned into an FIR on May 30 after Dutta met senior officials in the state administration.