In what is being viewed as a keenly contested battle between a rebel satrap and an irked monarch dissident, Trinamool Congress MP Kunal Ghosh on Thursday issued a veiled warning to his party leadership of “revealing the names” of “some persons” who had received favours from jailed ponzi fund kingpin Sudipto Sen.
Ghosh a journalist-turned MP had recently fallen out of his mentor Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the Saradha chit fund issue after he publicly alleged that some people who remain behind “the veneer of honesty and consider themselves as paragons of virtue” were using him as the scapegoat to tide over the chit fund crisis.
While Ghosh made the statement after coming out of the Bidhannagar police station on Thursday where he was grilled for seven hours, the CM was meeting her top bureaucrats like Home Secretary, Bidhanangar Police Commissioner, Kolkata Police Commissioner at the Secretariat.
“I do not think the police are doing anything wrong,” Ghosh said slightly unscrewing the lid of the chit fund ‘mystery box’ saying, “I would appeal to Sudipto to reveal to the police the names of eight people who were in close touch with him and who had accepted favours from him,” Ghosh said. “If he doesn’t do so then I will do” he warned.
He had earlier declared having kept a video-taped statement of his with a friend in Delhi which would be made public “if and when I am arrested and if I am not in a position to speak after my arrest.” The recorded CD was keeping him out of jail, a close friend and journalist said.
Ghosh once very close to the Chief Minister was the CEO of a television channel owned by Sen’s Saradha group. Curiously, the rebel MP whose deputy in the media channel Biswanath Dutta was arrested a few days ago — some five months after the scam exploded in the face of the State Government — was quizzed for the fifth time in as many months.
While the first interrogation came soon after Sen’s arrest he was quizzed for four successive times since the last week of September after publicly revolting against the party leadership along with two other MPs Shatabdi Roy and Tapas Paul who had since apoligised to the Chief Minister.
Ghosh on Thursday said the letter written by Sen — in the initial days of the scam story breaking out — to the CBI giving a dozen of names including some Ministers and MPs of the Trinamool Congress and Congress was “the product of a deep-rooted conspiracy.” In fact no other Trinamool MP save Ghosh whose name reportedly figured in the letter had been quizzed in the case.