Central agencies have swooped down on a slew of Trinamool Congress leaders in recent months, with heavyweights Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal the latest among them who have been arrested. The situation threatens to jeopardise TMC’s plans to spread its footprints nationwide and emerge as a credible challenger to the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
News18 takes a look at some Trinamool leaders who have been facing the heat from agencies like the ED and CBI.
Vinay Mishra
The Enforcement Directorate said in July that it had attached properties worth Rs 13.63 crore of a company linked to TMC youth wing leader Vinay Mishra and his arrested brother Vikas Mishra in a money laundering probe. The investigation is linked to an alleged illegal coal mining and pilferage case of West Bengal. “Vinay Mishra and Vikas Mishra alias Chotu delivered proceeds of crime worth Rs 731 crore with the help of business associates of Anup Maji alias Lala during July, 2018-March, 2020,” the ED said.
The money laundering case stems from a November 2020 FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that alleged a multi-crore-rupee coal pilferage scam related to Eastern Coalfields Limited mines in West Bengal’s Kunustoria and Kajora areas in and around Asansol. A chargesheet was filed by the ED in the case in May last year.
Vinay Mishra was recently declared a proclaimed offender by a Delhi court for evading court proceedings in this ED case.
He is also being probed by the CBI in this alleged illegal coal mining and pilferage scam case. Both the central agencies are also probing his role in a cross-border cattle smuggling case running along the India-Bangladesh international border in West Bengal.
Partha Chatterjee
Chatterjee and his aide Arpita Mukherjee were arrested on July 23 for alleged corruption in hiring of teachers and other staff when he was Bengal’s education minister in 2016 in a previous term of Mamata Banerjee’s government. They have been in ED custody since. The agency is looking into the money laundering angle in the case that’s being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
After mountains of cash were recovered from Arpita Mukherjee’s flats, TMC stripped Chatterjee of all ministerial portfolios and suspended him from the party.
Anubrata Mondal
The CBI on Thursday arrested senior Trinamool Congress leader Anubrata Mondal from his residence in West Bengal’s Bolpur for allegedly not cooperating in its probe into a cattle smuggling case.
Mondal had twice skipped his scheduled appearance before the central probe agency in the last few days, citing ill-health. He was arrested after an almost hour-long interrogation by a CBI team that arrived at the Birbhum district president’s house early on Thursday.
Abhishek Banerjee
The TMC MP’s wife Rujira was first questioned by the CBI in February 2021 for nearly four hours at her residence ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections in connection with the alleged multi-crore coal scam case.
In May this year, the Supreme Court allowed the ED, which is also probing the case, to question Abhishek and his wife in Kolkata by giving them 24-hour advance notice.
The investigation is linked to a 2020 FIR filed by the CBI in an alleged multi-crore pilferage scam in which Abhishek was a “beneficiary” of illegal funds, the ED has alleged.
Paresh Adhikary
On May 17, the Calcutta High Court directed the CBI to interrogate the state minister for the department of school education for the alleged appointment of his daughter Ankita Adhikary as a teacher in a government-aided school.
The HC also urged chief minister Mamata Banerjee and governor Jagdeep Dhankhar to remove Adhikari from the post of minister.
Manik Bhattacharya
Trinamool Congress MLA Manik Bhattacharya was questioned at the Enforcement Directorate office in Kolkata this month after he was summoned by the agency in connection with the SSC Teacher Recruitment scam. His summons comes just after Partha Chatterjee’s arrest.
Bhattacharya was recently removed from the post of the president of Bengal’s Primary Education Board after a court order. The ED recovered several crucial documents related to the alleged recruitment scam from the recent raids conducted at his residence.
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