The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday carried out search and seizure operations at three locations, including the ancestral house of Sandip Ghosh, the former RG Kar principal who is in custody for alleged financial irregularities at the hospital, at Chinar Park in Rajarhat.
The other two addresses were in Kalindi and Tala.
The central agency is probing the money trail in the alleged financial irregularities at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. Sources in the agency said the day’s operations were linked to the probe.
The CBI, which is also investigating the alleged irregularities, arrested Ghosh and three others on September 2. The four are now in judicial custody.
“The search and seizure operations were based on leads that emerged after scanning some of the documents collected so far,” said a senior ED official.
An ED team reached the house of Chandan Louha in Tala around 6.30am. The officers spoke to Louha, who is said to have received favours from Ghosh when he was the RG Kar principal, and his son and seized some documents from the house, sources said.
In its forwarding note to the special CBI court during the first production of Ghosh and the other three, the
agency had mentioned that Louha was among the several who received Ghosh’s “undue” favours.
“That it is primarily revealed that Dr Sandip Ghosh showed undue favour to M/s Khama Louha by way of awarding space on rent for running a café due to clout of Chandan Louha with influential people…” the forwarding note said.
Another team reached the office of a supplier of medical instruments in Kalindi and collected several documents related to business
transactions.
A third team reached Ghosh’s ancestral house at Chinar Park and waited for over an hour to get the keys to enter the locked house. The team members inspected the rooms and left after collecting some documents.
Akhtar Ali, a former deputy superintendent of RG Kar, had written to the state vigilance commission in July 2023 about Ghosh’s alleged malpractices. He had said tenders amounting to several crores of rupees “were given out only to a few of the favourite bidders who were not even eligible” to bid.
The ED questioned Ali on Wednesday and the search and seizure operations followed.
