The ongoing battle between the Mamata Banerjee Government and the Centre tended to heat up with the Kolkata Police on Monday sending a notice to an Odisha-based Deputy Director of Enforcement Directorate for questioning in an extortion related case. Meanwhile, the Jharkhand Congress MLA Kumar Jaymangal who had earlier filed a case in Ranchi accusing some of his party MLAs of taking money from the BJP to topple the Hemant Soren Government of Jharkhand on Monday told the Kolkata Police how he too was approached by some people with cash for changing sides.
The Kolkata Police notice comes days after the ED arrested Bengal Minister and number two in the State Cabinet Partha Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita Mukherjee and recovered Rs 50 crore in cash and huge amount of jewellery, foreign currency, property deeds and bank instruments from her apartments. The ED raid was related to a school-level recruitment scam and money laundering in its wake.
According to reports the the Kolkata Police has sent a notice to ED Deputy Director Subodh Kumar in connection with an extortion case during his tenure in Ranchi.
The whole issue came to the fore when the police recently arrested Rajiv Kumar an advocate from a mall in Kolkata on charges of extortion. The police reportedly recovered more than Rs 60 lakh from his possession.
According to sources in the police a Kolkata-based businessman had paid the amount to the advocate as an advance to withdraw a Public Interest Litigation in the Ranchi High Court. Sources said that Kumar had planned hundreds of PILs apparently with designs. Kolkata Police officials had already raided the residence of Kumar in Ranchi from where they reportedly recovered a number of documents.
The officials said that call details of Kumar revealed that he had telephonic conversations with the senior ED officials. Incidentally the said central officer was posted in Ranchi until he was transferred to Bhubaneshwar this year.
Reacting to the police action Bengal BJP leaders said that this was another way of thwarting investigations against the corrupted regime in the State. “The TMC is using the police to neutralise the ED as they did earlier also so that they derail the investigation process in recruitment scam and other numerous scams in the State … but that is not going to happen,” said BJP leader Rahul Sinha.
Meanwhile, Kumar Jaymangal told Kolkata Police about being approached by some people with cash for changing sides.”
“Initially we tried to reform the leaders who were trying to destabilize our Government but when they would not pay any heed we reported it to the authorities … I had come to Kolkata to get my statement recorded on how some parties are trying to make the Hemant Soren Government unstable … now it is for them to find out who is the culprit,” he said.
The incident comes weeks after three Jharkhand Congress MLAs were arrested by the Bengal Police with Rs 49 lakh in cash. They were traveling to Jharkhand back from Kolkata when their vehicle was intercepted by the Criminal Investigation Department.
Subsequently the police lodged a case of money laundering and were investigating BJP links to the entire episode.