Amid allegations of sexual harassment against him by a woman, Governor C V Ananda Bose on Thursday at Raj Bhavan released CCTV footage of the premises on 2 May for the general public.
The footage of two CCTV cameras, installed at the main gate (north) at Raj Bhavan, from around 5.30pm was shown to people, who were present at the show held at the Central Marble Hall. The CCTV footage show in three phases (5.31pm-5.42pm, 5.32pm-6.32pm and 6.32pm-6.41pm) took around one hour and nine minutes.
On Wednesday, Mr Bose announced that he would show the footage to 100 common people, excluding ‘politicians’ and police personnel.
The woman, who was a contractual employee of Raj Bhavan on Friday, had lodged a written complaint with the police alleging that she was molested by Mr Bose in the governor’s house on 24 April and 2 May.
Lal Bazar, Kolkata Police headquarters, formed an eight-member special enquiry team (SET) headed by Indrani Mukhopadhyay, deputy commissioner of police (central division), to probe the allegations brought against the Governor.
In the footage, the woman, dressed in blue jeans and top, was seen going to the police outpost, with a large number of policemen deployed on Raj Bhavan premises for the scheduled visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to the footage, around 5.40pm, the woman, along with some policemen was seen coming out of the outpost and entering into the room of an additional officer-in-charge (OC) of police. But she was not seen coming out of the room, the footage showed.
Mr Modi had, on 2 May stayed the night at Raj Bhavan, before addressing three political rallies in the state on 3 May.
According to sources at Raj Bhavan, around 75 people over phone registered their names seeking to see the footage. The phone calls made to Raj Bhavan were from Kolkata and several districts in north Bengal. Some people also registered their names through emails. But most of the people could not reach Raj Bhavan. Most of the viewers were media persons.
A Raj Bhavan official said, “However, only a few turned up. The intention was to let people judge the incident.
On the other hand, the SET probing the case has already interrogated six employees at Raj Bhavan so far.