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Abhishek Banerjee’s wife reaches ED office with her young son; grilled for 6 hrs
As Rujira, the wife of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, the chief minister lashed out at the Centre for trying to topple the Maharashtra government and using central agencies such as ED to harass political rivals
KOLKATA: Rujira Banerjee, the wife of Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, was questioned for six hours by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Kolkata on Thursday in the Bengal coal smuggling case.
Banerjee arrived at the agency’s Salt Lake office on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata a little after 11 am, her younger son in her arms. She was grilled for close to six hours.
Abhishek Banerjee faced the ED twice in Delhi in March this year. But Rujira refused to visit ED office in Delhi citing the risk of travelling during Covid-19 pandemic because of her two small children. Rujira and Abhishek later petitioned the Supreme Court, which last month ordered ED to question the couple at its Kolkata office and told the West Bengal government to deploy adequate personnel for the security of ED office and its personnel.
ED officials said Banerjee did not leave her son during her questioning when she was, among other things, asked about a huge amount of money that was allegedly deposited in two bank accounts in Thailand where she lived with her parents before marriage. ED officials asked her if she held any bank account registered in the name of Rujira Narula, her maiden name.
Rujira Banerjee was questioned by a special ED team that reached Kolkata earlier. There were two women in this team.
An ED official said on condition of anonymity that although Banerjee claimed to have no knowledge about most of the things she was asked about, her statements would be compared with the ones given by some of the other prime suspects.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered the coal smuggling case in November 2020; ED filed a money laundering case on the basis of this CBI case.
It is alleged that illegally mined coal, worth several thousand crores of rupees, was sold in the black market for several years by a racket operating in the western parts of Bengal where the Eastern Coalfields Limited runs several mines. It is alleged that proceeds from this operation went to political leaders.
Rujira Banerjee was questioned by the CBI in February last year at her husband’s south Kolkata residence. In March last year, CBI also questioned her sister Maneka Gambhir and the latter’s husband Ankush Arora and father-in-law Pawan Arora.
On March 16 this year, a special CBI court at Asansol in Bengal’s West Burdwan district issued an arrest warrant against TMC’s former youth front leader and businessman Vinay Mishra who renounced his Indian citizenship in December 2020 and became a citizen of Vanuatu, a small island country in the south-west Pacific.
The court declared Mishra an absconder in May after CBI informed the court that the arrested warrant could not be executed because he is untraceable.
Vinay Mishra was named by the CBI as a prime suspect. His brother, Vikas, was arrested earlier by ED and named in the agency’s first chargesheet filed in August last year.
