More than a year after his arrest, jailed Trinamool Congress MlA and former Minister Madan Mitra has spilled the beans on his party men’s involvement with chit fund money.
According to sources the Trinamool strongman has shared names with his CBI interrogators ten powerful people who had benefited from the ponzi money. A sizeable section of these people are serving or former MPs.
The CBI recently interrogated Mitra inside the Alipore correctional home where he is currently lodged. Most of those named had benefited from chit fund companies Assda and Angel Agrotech, sources quoting the former Minister said. Among the “influential people” name by the jailed leader are four Members of lok Sabha including two women, one Rajya Sabha MP, a former student leader and party general secretary, an ex-MP and his wife, a person whose name the CBI sleuths are trying to ascertain, a jailed MP and a painter, sources maintained.
Curiously, Mitra has taken the names of two instead of three Rajya Sabha MPs who are already under CBI glare. Besides he has not spent a word on any of his former Ministerial colleagues, three or four of who had allegedly played a vital role in fund collection and distribution.
“The names that have been divulged by him are not of much consequence because they had already been doing the rounds in the media. The very fact that he has not taken the names of the real big fishes including some topmost members of his party is a proof that he is trying to play a trick with the CBI,” said Abdul Mannan a senior Congress leader.
“There is a strong presumption that he is trying to make a case in his favour so that he can get bail by projecting himself as a person who is cooperating with the Agency much the way one of his senior party leaders did last year,” said Bikash Bhattacharya, a senior counsel in Calcutta High Court.
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