The CBI on Sunday searched the homes of Calcutta mayor and Bengal minister Firhad Hakim and Trinamul MLA Madan Mitra along with 10 other locations, including the residences of several former and present chairpersons of municipalities.

Agency officials said the searches were related to alleged irregularities in the recruitment of staff across municipal bodies in the state. Hakim is state urban and municipal affairs minister.

CBI officers said the searches covered 12 places in Calcutta, Kanchrapara, Barrackpore, Halisahar, Dum Dum, North Dum Dum, Krishnanagar, Taki, Kamarhati and Dakshineswar. They were carried out in connection with a case registered against Ayan Sil, director of a private company, at the behest of Calcutta High Court in March.

Around 9am on Sunday, two CBI teams knocked on the doors of Hakim’s Chetla residence and Mitra’s Bhowanipore house. Later, a team went to Mitra’s Dakshineswar home too.

The searches at Hakim’s Chetla residence and Mitra’s Dakshineswar home ended late in the evening. Those at the 10 other locations had been completed earlier.

“We have seized several documents from all the locations searched,” a CBI official said.

After the CBI team left his house, Hakim expressed anger at the raids and alleged that he and his family had suffered harassment.

“Am I a thief? What have I done that my family and I are being repeatedly subjected to such harassment, just because I am not following the BJP line?” Hakim told reporters.

Hakim said that municipal recruitments are not done through the minister’s office.

“They have taken photocopies of our property documents, my passport details and my identity card details,” Hakim said. The “outcome of the CBI search”, he said, was “a big zero”.

Mitra, Kamarhati MLA and a former minister, said he had been asked several “irrelevant questions” such as how many wives he had. “I was asked if I have one wife or two. I told them it was an easy thing to find out.”

Mitra claimed the agency officials did not ask him anything specific about recruitments to the Kamarhati Municipality.

“I was in jail during the period (2014-18) they are probing. I receive many job applications at my office every day; does that mean I’m part of the job racket?” he asked.

Mitra was in jail custody in connection with the Narada scandal, in which politicians were purportedly seen accepting cash. He is out on bail.

Alleged irregularities in recruitments to municipal bodies had come to light when the Enforcement Directorate purportedly found documents relating to various Bengal civic bodies during search-and-seizure operations at the home of Sil, a real estate promoter.

Sil is an accused in the civic recruitment case as well as the case relating to alleged irregularities in the appointments of primary school teachers.

All contracts for providing OMR sheets for the exams to recruit Group C and Group D employees to various municipalities were allegedly given to Sil’s company, ABS Infozon.

The homes of former chairpersons of the municipalities at Kanchrapara (Sudama Roy), Halisahar (Angshuman Roy), New Barrackpore (Tripti Majumdar), Krishnanagar (Asim Saha) and North Dum Dum (Subodh Chakraborty), and the current chairpersons of the municipalities at Taki (Somnath Mukherjee) and Dum Dum (Harendra Singh) were searched.

Trinamul state general secretary Kunal Ghosh linked the CBI raids to the ongoing sit-in led by party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee outside RajBhavan.

“The indefinite sit-in demonstration led by Abhishek Banerjee has been a smash hit nationally, and has put the BJP under tremendous pressure,” Ghosh said.

At the sit-in, Abhishek said: “Central agencies visited (Bengal minister) Rathin Ghosh’s house a few days ago. I asked him, what were they doing for so long? He told me that the ED officials were sleeping in his bed, because if they left quickly, it would have been clear that they didn’t find anything.”

He added: “Madan Mitra shared his experience. Firhad Hakim will also talk about his experience tomorrow. They keep issuing summons to me but are not able to make us surrender.

“Bring all the ED and CBI officials of the country to Calcutta and hold five raids every day. The language of our protest will get sharper with each such raid. Those questioning the central government are being raided by the ED and the CBI. Cases under the UAPA are being filed against journalists, and they expect us to learn about democracy from the BJP?”

The alleged trail began with the arrest of Sil, who is in judicial custody, CBI officials said. They alleged that around 1,500 people were illegally recruited, against bribes, by various civic bodies in the state between 2014 and 2018.