law seemed to tighten its coil around former IPS officer and alleged Mamata Banerjee favourite Bharati Ghosh even as the Bengal Criminal Investigation Department on Wednesday recovered Rs 2 crore from her husband MV Raju’s flat in South Kolkata’s Banshdroni area, sources said.
Ghosh who was currently out of State with the sleuths hot in pursuit resigned as the SP of Midnapore after she was reportedly shunted to a less significant post following reports of her growing proximity to BJP leader Mukul Roy who left Trinamool Congress last year to mark the end of his own 17-year close partnership with the Chief Minister.
In what Ghosh’s aides called a part of bigger conspiracy to victimize the ex-senior cop the CID recovered wads of Rs 500 notes carefully stacked and stashed away inside the flat. “We are trying to confirm the source of the currency notes,” a senior official said.
The raid was conducted in connection with a case of extortion lodged against Ghosh who is credited with subjugating the Maoists and eliminating its senior leader Kishenji but censured by the human rightists for “murdering him in the cold blood with State connivance.”
Wednesday’s raids came a day after a team of CID officers recovered 1000 grams of gold from Ghosh’s locker that she subsequently claimed as Stridhan “disclosed before joining the services.”
The Rs 2 crore is in addition to the seizure of another Rs 2.5 crore a few weeks ago from her another flat, sources said. “The source of the cash will have to be explained by the person concerned,” officials said adding the cash was probably kept inside the flat by Ghosh’s former security guard Sujit Mondal who incidentally left the job in tandem with his former boss and was currently at large.While the opposition parties accuse Ghosh for systematically subjugating their cadres and establishing Trinamool Congress in Jangalmahal area the BJP claims that the former SP was paying dearly for failing to tow the Chief Minister’s line in the closing part of her career.
The saffron outfit also explains the ferocity of CID raids in terms the Trinamool top brass’ hidden fear about the secret files related to the alleged murder of Kishenji which was allowed to pass off by the Government as an encounter.