The Central Bureau of Investigation once again swung into action a day after being nudged by the Calcutta High Court conducting raids at 8 different locations including the houses of two Trinamool Congress councillors and an MLA, sources said adding the central agency investigating the multi-crore school recruitment scam recovered at least Rs 35 lakhs from the house of TMC’s MLA from Domkal, Zafikul Islam.
The raids came within hours of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s fiery speech in Kolkata condemning Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for running a “thoroughly corrupt” Government.
The CBI sleuths took in its possession a whole lot of documents including bank statements and income tax returns of Kolkata-based municipal councilor Bappaditya Dasgupta considered close to jailed former Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee and New Town-based councillor Debraj Chakrabarty who too is close to another senior TMC minister of the State.
“These raids are being conducted as a part of our investigation into the teachers’ scam. The raids are on. We are questioning the people whose homes and offices are being raided,” the official said.
Even as search operations were conducted at various locations from Cooch Behar in North Bengal to Murshidabad in central part of the
State to North 24 Parganas and Kolkata proper inside sources said they had recovered wads of currency notes from the house of Zafikul Islam a TMC MLA from Domkal in Murshidabad district. The cash was still being counted and the amount was likely to go up, sources said.
Islam who claimed that the recovered money formed the proceeds of a land he sold out recently, sources in Murshidabad said that there was more than what met the naked eye. “He was very close to Manik Bhattacharya” another party MLA and former TET chairman presently in jail on charges of selling thousands of school teachers’ for crores, a former TMC leader presently in the Congress Party said.
Meanwhile, crying political vendetta once again senior TMC leader and Bengal Minister Bobby Hakim said, “the BJP is behind all these raids …they are trying to malign the TMC by falsely implicating our leaders so that they break down before the next year’s elections … they are doing this because they don’t have ground beneath their feet which will be proved in the coming elections … the TMC will win again and the BJP will go down the drain.”
Meanwhile, in parallel development the Calcutta High Court hearing the multi-crore ration distribution scam on Thursday directed the State Government to install CCTV cameras inside the cabin of arrested former Food Minister Jyoti Priya Mallick who is presently under treatment in the State-owned SSKM Hospital.
The Court directed the Government to install CCTV cameras and share its links with the Enforcement Directorate after the ED officials told the Court that “third party” entry was being recorded inside the cabin of Mallick who is presently the State Forest Minister.