On Wednesday, the Supreme Court had to decide which of two starkly different images of the same man to believe. Sumit Roy, the personal assistant to Trinamool Congress chief Abhishek Banerjee, is a witness who is evading accountability in a land fraud case, which is "only the tip of the iceberg", according to the government's Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. To Roy's advice he's a citizen defending his constitutional right to silence and he's cooperating on paper as the state aggressively works toward custody that it doesn't deserve. The decision will be made by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, who presided over the case in concert with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, and will be far from trivial, given the fact that this was one of the two bail pleas.

The case goes back to Salboni in Paschim Medinipur district where investigators say the government land was illegally grabbed and fraudulently transferred years ago. Roy has been appointed as one of the accused. The warrant was issued by a court in Midnapore in June following several hours of futile efforts by police to trace him, even when they searched Banerjee's residence in Kolkata, but failed to find him. The judge of the Calcutta High Court on August 3 rejected his anticipatory bail plea, saying the possibility of custodial interrogation could not be ruled out at this stage. Roy was then shifted to the Supreme Court, which on August 6 put a stay on his arrest but had imposed some conditions, he would be allowed to appear in court without any lawyer or companion and would be kept for questioning between 10 am and 6 pm, and he had to cooperate fully. This is currently being challenged in court. Cooperation has been more "form than substance," the state told the bench Wednesday, seeking that it rescind the protection it granted less than two weeks ago.

The difference between this hearing and the typical bail case is the party seeking custody. The demand comes from the West Bengal government, which is not the Trinamool government that has been in power for more than 10 years here. After the change of political guard this year, the state law enforcement officials are now doing their best to prosecute the inner circle of the party that previously ran the very machine they're investigating. Mehta explicitly stated in court that "the agencies had earlier attempted to arrest Roy but the process was blocked and it was Mamata Banerjee who had personally intervened to stop enforcement. What an amazing statement it is to make on record and what an incredible way of looking at a routine anticipatory bail hearing!

The bench resisted the state's reasoning as it listened to the complaint. However, when Mehta insisted that Roy be custody interrogated, despite his promise to cooperate, Chief Justice Kant put the question on the table: “Is the state saying the police is the problem?” It's a legitimate question and one that gets to the essence of criminal procedure: Courts don't like to take away the interim protection from a person who shows up, takes questions and makes no effort to avoid them. Roy's lawyers have cited that, claiming their client wasn't even mentioned in the original FIR, that his alleged involvement only came to light during the investigation, and that silence at the questioning is a privilege the Constitution provides all citizens and not a sign of guilt.

This controversy has a broader economic context which is not often mentioned in court coverage. The land, in West Bengal, has emerged as the one largest differential which the state is pitching to investors. The current government's first budget, which is worth Rs 4.38 lakh crore for the year, has put its trust in a promise to create a dynamic land bank and reclaim the plots lying idle since decades in the name of public sector undertakings and industrial estates, along with the review of the old Urban Land Ceiling Act. Senior officials from the state's chambers of commerce and other industry representatives hailed the measures on the digitisation of land records as the most significant item in the budget for potential investors in the state's land bank plan. The WIC has already reserved about six thousand acres for industries with the developed plots being concentrated in districts such as Paschim Medinipur and Paschim Bardhaman while the undeveloped plots are spread across, with Raghunathpur of Purulia having more than three thousand acres of undeveloped land waiting for utilization.

Land fraud cases such as Salboni pitch awkwardly against that. Each and every allegation of illegal transfer or fraudulent mutation undermines not only the validity of the land title system, but the trustworthiness of the state to tout it as clean, verifiable and free from disputes to outsiders while simultaneously attempting to sell it on as such. It is important to note that Banglarbhumi portal the state's flagship model land record digital portal was created specifically to give the buyers and investors of land the confidence that ownership records are clear and cannot be forged. Whether that's true or just a blip on the radar screen is tested in a high profile prosecution within the highest echelons of the political establishment, running concurrently with the cases of Sandeshkhali where courts have already raised the red flag on delayed prosecution and land grab. Whether or not the right-hander, political party or not, in office, it may be concluded that property rights are in practice poorly enforced by those who wield the power to protect them, based on the media coverage of the events.

So far, the Supreme Court has not said that it will overturn its earlier protection. The bench seemed to want to test the state's commitment to a non-cooperation stance before it would permit custodial interrogation to trump a cooperation commitment, yet the bench had not yet been convinced of Mehta's other charges of past obstruction. The future of Roy's case hangs in the balance as a result of the court's weighing of due process versus the government's argument that this is more important than evasiveness by one aide. But it will also be part of another calculation taking place in the board room out of Delhi.