A group of senior citizens lodged a complaint with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday evening, alleging that an infrastructure development company, one of whose directors was the Trinamul Congress’ Basirhat MP Nusrat Jahan, had duped them of several crores of rupees by promising them flats in New Town.
BJP leader Shankudeb Panda who was instrumental in getting the complaint filed with the ED alleged that the company had struck a deal with 429 members of the group, mostly retired employees of a nationalised bank, in 2014 to hand over 3BHK flats to them through a cooperative society on a plot in New Town, close to Eco Park.
Close to 500 cottahs of land were to be purchased with each member paying over Rs 5 lakh for the project and the deal was that the Gariahat-based company would hand over the apartments in three years, he said.
Panda alleged that among the documents he had handed over to ED were those that stated that the Trinamul MP was among the directors of the company, which had collected around Rs 24 crore from the investors for the project but did not hand over apartments to them till this time.
Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, alleged on Tuesday that Jahan had bought a flat worth Rs 1.55 crore by diverting the amount that the investors had deposited with the infrastructure company.
“A complaint has been lodged with the ED’s joint director and the MP is directly involved in the corruption. The MP bought a flat worth Rs 1.55 crore by diverting their funds,” Adhikari said.
“We have all documents and will stand by these senior citizens. The exact level of corruption by this MP will surface shortly.”
Senior ED officials said they were going through the documents to verify the veracity of the allegation that had been levelled against the company.
Records reveal the actress-cum-MP joined the company as director in December 2014 and remained so till March 2017. This newspaper tried to seek Jahan’s response to the allegation but several calls to her went unanswered.
Nusrat is believed to have told those in her closed circles that since it’s being claimed that a formal complaint was lodged with the central investigating agency, she will reply to the allegation after consulting her lawyer.
Some of the retired bank employees said after failing to get their apartments, they had approached Gariahat police station to lodge an FIR. They said the police refused to register the FIR and subsequently, they moved the court to lodge a formal complaint against the company.
A complaint was subsequently drawn up and a preliminary investigation was carried out.
“The probe report was submitted to the Alipore court in January where it was suggested that the complainants have a case against the company’s seven directors, which included Nusrat Jahan,” one of the complainants said.
“Rakesh Singh, one of the directors, was even arrested following the court’s order. He is now out on bail.”
Fake certificate slur
Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said on Tuesday that fake caste certificates were issued by the local administration to help Trinamul Congress file candidates in reserved seats during the recent panchayat polls.
“We have collected fake caste documents of more than 100 Trinamul candidates. We will continue this process for the next 15 days. Our MLAs and mandal presidents will get engaged in this process. We have prepared a block-wise list,” Adhikari said addressing a news conference in the Assembly.
“I believe most of the certificates issued by the Backward Class Welfare department to the Trinamul leaders, especially the OBC certificates, in the last three months are fake,” he added.
The Nandigram MLA referred to a recent Calcutta High Court order that recommended the suspension of the SDO of Uluberia Shamik Kumar Ghosh and BDO Niladri Dey of Uluberia 1 for issuing fake caste certificates to Trinamul candidates.
Complying with an RTI filed by Adhikari, the State Election Commission has provided him with all details of every candidate who contested from a caste-reserved seat.
The BJP will publish the names of all Trinamul candidates who allegedly contested with fake caste certificates in a compact disk after August 15. According to their allegations, Opposition candidates who genuinely belonged to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, or other backward classes were denied certificates.