Once a Mamata Banerjee-favourite and former IPS officer Bharati Ghosh is reportedly on the run with the Bengal Crime Investigation Department hot in her pursuit, sources said.
Armed with an arrest warrant in an extortion case teams of CID have been sent to parts of north, western and central India including Delhi, MP and Gujarat apparently to preempt her move seeking anticipatory bail.
The latest development comes after massive raids conducted in more than half-a-dozen properties belonging to the former IPS and her relatives yielded no more than Government files, 57 bottles of foreign liquor and Rs 2.5 crore, not sufficient to merit an arrest warrant and hot pursuit, legal experts say.
According to sources the ex-Midnapore SP, once considered the fair-haired daughter of the Chief Minister is in possession of a bunch of sensitive files on Maoist leader Kishenji’s alleged encounter death, Sharada chit fund business in Jangalmahal and its possible links with Trinamool-Maoist proliferation in the region — which if leaked could politco-legally devastate the TMC topmost brass.
“They (the ruling TMC) want to arrest me quickly because they fear that I may reveal the vital details against the ruling party leaders and so they have falsely implicated me in a case by using as a tool one of the notorious international cattle smugglers who has filed a case against me” Ghosh has said in an audio message from an undisclosed location.
“An arrest warrant has also been issued against Ghosh’s former security personnel Sujit Mondal. The investigating agency said teams have been sent outside the State to conduct search operations and catch the persons accused in the case of extortions.
The CID has already arrested two police officers - Inspector Subhankar De and Sub Inspector Chitta Pal- apparently close to Ms Ghosh, for their alleged involvement in an extortion case in West Midnapore Daspur.
The case referred to by Ghosh relates to an alleged recovery by the Midnapore police in 2016 of Rs 45 lakh from inside a car involved in an accident. “While the victims were hospitalised the cash disappeared. Though the police said it would be returned it was never returned and lower rank officers said the cash was with the SP.
“Following a subsequent writ in Calcutta High Court the police offered an out of court settlement and returned Rs 20 lakh. But after we withdrew the suit they returned and seized the money once again,” the complainant said.
“It is unusual that the police acts so fast that too against a former senior officer unless there is a political urgency to save some very senior politician,” said a retired Kolkata Commissioner of Police. Reportedly in constant touch with the saffron leadership in north India after Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh offered her a political berth vowing to use “use an iron to cut an iron,” the emboldened IPS has said “I will fight them out till the end. I will drag them to the Supreme Court where the CID and their masters will have to account for their deeds.”
In Kolkata the Bengal Opposition parties have demanded a statement from the Trinamool Congress regarding the claims made by Ghosh who is “paying the price of her misdeeds by brutally the common man’s voice and the Opposition politics in Jangalmahal to ensure a victory for the TMC.”
The ruling party “owes a statement to the people regarding the claims being made by Bharati Ghosh,” CPI(M)’s Sujan Chakrabarty said wondering “what happened that the woman who once called Mamata Banerjee the Mother of Jangalmahal is running to save her life from her. We want the Government to throw light on this development.”