The Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday named senior Trinamool Congress leader and strongman Anubrata Mondal as a key conspirator in its 35-page chargesheet filed in the cow smuggling case. Mondal has been in jail since the August this year.
In the supplementary chargesheet the CBI has claimed that Mondal had accumulated a large of amount assets disproportionate to his known source of income. The Agency has referred to 53 deeds related to 57 -60 landed properties apart from cash and fixed deposit in a bank worth Rs 18 crore.
The chargesheet also refers to the name of another accused Saigal Hussein a police constable and Mondal’s personal security guard who had allegedly amassed wealth in the vicinity of Rs 100 crore.
In the document the probe agency also alleges that Mondal ran his cow smuggling racket through his henchmen like Hussein. During its investigation the agency interrogated 95 people. The name of Mondal came to the fore after the CBI registered an FIR in 2020. The Agency had arrested cattle smuggler Enamul Haq and a BSF commandant following which Mondal’s name surfaced sources said adding between the years 2015 and 2017 about 20,000 were seized by the security forces.
“If this huge number of cattle was seized by the BSF then you can easily imagine the number of cattle transported across the border. A cow purchased for around Rs 35-40 thousand in this part of the border fetches about Rs 1.5 lakh or more in Bangladesh.