Minister Jyoti Priya Mallick’s personal assistant Amit Dey has said he knew Bakibur Rahman, the Calcutta-based businessman who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with alleged irregularities in the public distribution system (PDS) in Bengal.

“Bakibur Rahman k chintam. Uni office-ey ashteyn (I knew Bakibur Rahman. He used to visit the office (of the food and supplies department),” Dey said when journalists asked him whether he knew the businessman

Dey was on his way out of the ED’s Salt Lake office late on Saturday night.

Dey and Avijit Das, Mallick’s former personal assistant, were questioned separately for several hours on Saturday, a day after the arrest of Mallick, who had been the minister in charge of the food and supplies for a decade since 2011. Mallick is now the minister in charge of forests, public enterprises and industrial reconstruction.

“Bakibur used to visit the department like many others. They (the ED officials) wanted to know if I knew anything about those who would visit the minister’s office by virtue of being close to him,” Dey added in his brief interaction with journalists, on his way out of the CGO Complex.

Senior ED officials said Dey’s admission was crucial against the backdrop of the arrested minister’s purported claim that he didn’t know Rahman.

The owner of a PDS shop and a rice mill, Rahman was arrested on October 13 at the end of a search and raid operation for nearly 56 hours in Calcutta and adjoining areas.

On Saturday, he was remanded in judicial custody till November 11 after his ED custody ended.

Investigators from the central agency said they had traced Rahman’s properties and assets worth close to Rs 100 crore and alleged that they were made from the proceeds of crime, of the alleged irregularities in the PDS. The businessman amassed vast properties during a period when Mallick was the ruling Trinamul Congress’s all-powerful North 24-Parganas district president. North 24-Parganas is Rahman’s native district and the hub of his principal operations.

“Bakibur was part of a network that was used to transfer the proceeds of crime through a maze of accounts and shell companies. There are reasons to believe that he was very close to the arrested minister,” said a senior ED official.

While pressing for Mallick’s custody following his arrest on Friday, the ED had told the Bankshall court that it had traced at least three shell companies with links to Rahman and the firms had offered Rs 8 crore to the minister as a loan in tranches and the amount was never returned.

On Sunday, officials said they had traced three other shell companies where Rahman was a director. The three firms were shut down in 2019, exactly a decade after they were opened. The three companies share the same address — Jessore Road, Madhyamgram.

These shell companies were used to park the proceeds of crime from the alleged irregularities in the PDS and a part of the money allegedly made its way to Mallick, said the officials.

“Since the case was registered under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act), our sole goal has been to trace the route that the ill-gotten money has taken and identify the beneficiaries,” said an ED official.