Gopal Ghosh died a couple of years ago. But even after his death he managed to open a bank account. At least the records seized by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing the cow smuggling case that has seen Trinamnool Congress strongman and Trinamool Congress’ Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal go to jail --- say so. This, whereas the deceased person’s brother says that he has no idea of the account of his brother being used by others. “We don’t even know that an account was opened in the name of my dead brother,” said his brother.
Similarly Sundari Basaki who lives in a mudded house too has an account in the same cooperative bank but she has no idea of how many lakhs have been transacted through that account. “I have not signed anywhere … because I am illiterate … I have not opened any account … but here you say that I have an account … it is a bolt from the blue … several lakhs of rupees were parked in my bank and here we don’t have two square meals to eat,” says Sundari.
These are only two of 177 instances that the CBI has stumbled upon in a day-long raid in the Suri Cooperative Bank. In course of investigating the cow smuggling case the CBI has found that the accounts were used to legalise crores of rupees allegedly earned from cattle smuggling. Till now trace of Rs 10 crore has been found, CBI sources said adding most of these accounts either belong to dead or non-existent persons or poor villagers who have no inkling of the whopping amount of money that were transacted through their accounts.
When asked as to how scamsters managed to get documents required to open accounts relatives of Mamata Mridha another account holder said, “we had submitted copies of our Aadhar, voter cards etc for MNREGA job cards but it seems that they have misused these documents for their purpose.”
The CBI is known to have traced the link of the ill-gotten money to Food Department too. According to sources the proceeds from the cow smuggling were used to purchase low quality crops, mostly rice from the farmers and then these were sold to the Food Department. The payments were then received in the fake accounts, sources said.
Incidentally Mondal and his associates had purchased a number of rice mills worth crores in Birbhum and neighbouring Burdwan districts.
The officials on Friday grilled Abhishek Samanta, the manager of the Cooperative Bank, a state government controlled entity. Samanta is known to have provided crucial information to the investigators, sources said adding the total amount thus transacted may go far beyond Rs 10 crore.
Reacting to the development Trinamool Congress spokesperson on Friday said that his party was for zero tolerance for corruption but demanded an impartial probe from the CBI. “Let the law take its own course … let the guilty be punished but my question is why the CBI is not interrogating one of the prime accused in the Narada scam … why don’t they interrogate Suvendu Adhikari who is a person named in the CBI FIR.”
Another senior leader and TMC MP Saugato Roy said “the CBI has become a narrow-minded agency … they are being shamelessly used by the BJP to serve its own cause.”