A day-long and multi-pronged search operation at the residences of two ministers and a councillor by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the Bengal civic body recruitment scam kept the state’s political circuit sizzling on an otherwise chilly winter day when, ironically, people observed the 160th birth anniversary of one of the country’s tallest philosophical leaders, Swami Vivekananda.
The biggest dust-up was created around the raids which began early Friday morning at the twin residences of Bengal Fire Services minister Sujit Bose in the Lake Town area of north Calcutta.
The search operation lasted for nearly 14 hours at the end of which some seven ED officers were seen leaving the four-storey building, where the minister currently lives, with a bag full of seized documents. The accompanying CRPF contingent, guarding the vicinity in great numbers also followed suit.
Bose was searched for his suspected involvement in irregular recruitments in the South Dum Dum municipality during his previous tenure as the vice chairman of the civic body.
“If they can prove my involvement in any corrupt activity in this state, I will waste no time in sending my resignation to Mamata Banerjee,” the minister said in a press conference after the raids concluded. Bose alleged that despite his repeated requests before the investigating officers, his mobile phone was taken away which would cause him difficulty in discharging his duties in the government, especially because he handled a sensitive department like fire and emergency services.
The raids at Bose’s private compounds were part of a coordinated search operation which the ED simultaneously conducted at the residence of another Trinamul heavyweight and state junior minister, Tapas Roy, in Bowbazar, and at the Birati premises owned by Subodh Chakraborty, Trinamul councillor and former chairman of North Dum Dum municipality in the northern fringes of the city.
The raids were a follow-up to multi-pronged search operations conducted by the agency in the same case exactly a week ago, in which at least two operations – in Sandeshkhali and Bongaon in North 24 Parganas – resulted in widespread mob violence and attacks on ED officials that left several officers hurt, their vehicles damaged and properties stolen.
Bose and Roy were among the long line of top-rung Trinamul leaders of the state who came under central investigation agency scanner for suspected involvement in various corruption cases in Bengal which the CBI and ED are currently probing on directions of the Calcutta High Court. Multiple ruling party leaders have been raided, questioned and even indicted in a wide range of graft cases that have rocked the state in the recent past.
Previously, former education minister Partha Chatterjee, who was subsequently sacked from the Trinamul, was arrested in the state school jobs scam and state former food and sitting forest minister Jyotipriya Mallick was arrested in the ration distribution scam case.
Several party heavyweights like Birbhum district chief Anubrata Mondal and sitting MLAs Jiban Krishna Saha and Manik Bhattacharya are currently behind bars for various corruption charges. While multiple middle-order leaders of the Trinamul have also been booked by the agencies, houses of top leaders like Firhad Hakim have also been raided.
The Trinamul’s perceived second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee, his wife Rujira, and sister-in-law Menaka Gambhir have been summoned for questioning by both the ED and the CBI multiple times.
The ED search teams, divided into two groups, reached Bose’s current address and his ancestral property in Lake Town at 6.30 AM on Friday and managed to get inside after a verbal spat with the compound’s security personnel and caretakers who refused entry to the agency officers initially.
While the 61-year-old minister was held back at his present address and examined by the agency officers, the minister’s son, Samudra, was seen leaving with ED officials from the minister’s ancestral property around 4 PM, after over nine hours of search, and walked over to an adjacent apartment right opposite the Sreebhumi Sporting Club from where Bose reportedly ran an office.
An hour and a half later, the officials left the premises and a confident-sounding Samudra was seen going back to the residence of his father where the agency was still conducting its operations.
“There’s no need to worry. We are cooperating fully with the investigators. All facts of the case would come out in due time,” Samudra was heard telling reporters while refusing to divulge any further details.
Bose, it was learned, came under the agency scanner after real estate promoter and a close aide of expelled TMC leader Santanu Banerjee, Ayan Sil, was arrested by the ED in March last year in connection with the school jobs scam case and documents related to dubious recruitment of Group C and Group D staff in municipalities (besides hundreds of OMR sheets in connection with the teachers’ recruitment scam) were seized from his office.
The discovery brought to light a fresh domain of possible corruption indulged in by a section of the state’s ruling dispensation following which Justice Abhijit Ganguly of the Calcutta High Court ordered the central investigation agencies to expand its probe into the irregularities in municipal recruitments.
Having learnt its lessons the hard way in the wake of mob fury in Sandeshkhali and Bongaon a week ago, the Directorate officials looked better prepared while conducting the Friday raids. A large contingent of CRPF jawans, wielding sticks and armed with tear gas dispensers took control of the area surrounding Bose’s residence in Lake Town. The jawans also conducted area domination route marches during the raids to disperse unwanted gatherings of people from the area.
While the agency’s raiding team at Chakraborty’s residence in Birati left after almost 10 hours of search and examination, the team which landed up at 105, BB Ganguly Street left Roy’s house an hour later.
“In my entire political career, I have never been part of any shady deal and there was hardly anything the investigators found at my place. I will not speak of political vendetta, I leave that job to my leaders Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee,” Roy said. The Baranagar MLA did, however, confirm that the ED had seized his mobile phone and some papers from his office on the ground floor of his residence.
“The agency has returned empty-handed. I have nothing to hide and I will keep fighting this till my last breath,” Chakraborty said after the raiding team left his Birati house.
Commenting on the ongoing raids, state leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari claimed that the agency had enough evidence of corruption in its kitty before planning the search operations. “I advise the Trinamul leaders to start packing their bags and carry enough winter wear,” Adhikari said, in an oblique reference to prison time for the suspects.
Lashing out at the BJP leader while specifically targeting Adhikari at his press conference, Bose retorted: “I will be going to Gangasagar for a few days tomorrow and I will be packing warm clothes because of the chill. But Suvendu must first look in the mirror and answer why he took money on camera wrapped in newspapers.”
“BJP will never tolerate a corrupt person like Suvendu and he will never be able to rise in ranks in that party. He has been retained in that party for a limited purpose: to bark at us,” Bose said while, interestingly, stating, “I don’t believe that all leaders in the BJP are as degenerate as Suvendu”.
“We have been at the receiving end of political vendetta of the BJP for a long time now and using agencies to achieve political goals in Bengal is nothing new. What’s happening today is one more manifestation of that,” responded Trinamul minister Sashi Panja.
