As a part of its investigation process into the multi-crore cow smuggling case the Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday unearthed another lot of 153 fake bank accounts opened in the names of villagers who had no inkling of their presence.
All the accounts opened in the Birbhum district Cooperative Bank were frozen by the agency. Early this month the CBI had grubbed up 177similar accounts. The Wednesday’s expose take the total number of fake accounts to 330 CBI sources said adding there were possibilities ofmany more fake accounts getting exposed.
On whether the accounts could be related to cow smuggling case — that has already seen Trinamool Congress national executive member and Birbhum strongman Anubrata Mondal go to jail — sources said most of the fake accounts had transactions with two rice mills linked to Mondal.
Villagers in whose names the accounts were opened and who were interrogated regarding the transactions said they had no idea of the accounts having existed. Some villagers said that though they had accounts in their names they were so poor that their savings hardlycrossed three-figure mark.
When asked as to how the accounts came into existence in their names some villagers said that they had never gone to the banks, neither shared their personal details with anyone save on the occasions when they gave away the copies of their Aadhar and Voter ID cards to local panchayat or ruling party members for the purpose of receiving wages under MNREGA.