A network of rice mill owners, distributors and dealers was allegedly at work to ensure beneficiaries of the public distribution system in Bengal did not receive their due share of wheat and rice despite the state government footing the bill, investigators from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Saturday as its teams raided 13 locations in three districts.

A significant number of these mill owners would allegedly end up selling PDS wheat and rice in open markets and park their money in assets, riding a support system that arrested rice mill owner Bakibur Rahman allegedly built with the backing of arrested minister Jyoti Priya Mallick, they said.

Bakibur, a Calcutta-based businessman who was arrested ahead of Mallick on October 14, amassed assets worth close to Rs 100 crore, ED officials said.

“A rice mill owner from Bongaon in North 24-Parganas, for instance, opened his first mill in July 2019. Within a month, he set up another rice mill. Within two months of the first, he became a partner in a gems and jewellery company. By 2021, he was one of the directors of a hotel,” said a senior ED official. “We would like to know the source of his income and check his papers.”

Bongaon was among several places in North 24-Parganas district where separate ED teams carried out search and raid operations on Saturday.

Besides North 24-Parganas, where Mallick was Trinamul’s district president, teams of ED officers fanned out to rice and wheat mills across parts of Nadia and Howrah.

Some of the aspects that ED teams focussed on during their search and raid operations at 13 locations in these districts on Saturday were the volume of orders that these mills received from the state for supplying to ration distributors, yearly log sheets of items sent out of the mills, transaction details of bank accounts connected to the mills and list of the ration suppliers who would receive items from these mills.

Among several locations where ED teams carried out raids on Saturday was the office of a wheat mill owner on AJC Bose Road in Calcutta, his house in Ballygunge and his mill in Howrah. Officials said they wanted to check the charges that the company would procure wheat meant for the PDS and use it to sell packed wheat under a separate brand name in the open market.