A Howrah city court on Sunday remanded three Jharkhand Congress MLAs arrested on Saturday evening with Rs 49 lakh in cash to 10 days of police custody.
The MLAs, who were suspended from the Congress with immediate effect, were arrested after the Bengal Police on Saturday recovered Rs 49 lakh from the vehicle they were traveling in from Kolkata to Jharkhand.
The arrested politicians —— Irfan Ansari, Rajesh Kachhap and Naman Bixal — claimed that they had come to Kolkata to purchase sarees from Burra Bazar for a tribal festival, but they could not provide satisfactory answers about the source of the money leading the Trinamool Congress and the Congress Party to allege that the money had BJP links.
Alleging an Assam link, the TMC said the recovered cash could be a part of the amount meant for engineering defection in the Jharkhand Government. The TMC allegations came after the CID found that the MLAs had returned from Assam to Kolkata from where they were returning to Jharkhand. They were intercepted on Kolkata-Dhanbad Durgapur Express Way.
“Like it happened during the toppling of the Maharashtra Government with the help of Hemant Biswa Sarma ... This time it could be a similar plan ... Let the investigation take place we will know everything,” TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said, adding even the detention of Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Rawat was scripted by the BJP.