The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday raided the homes of West Bengal municipal affairs minister Firhad Hakim and Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator Madan Mitra in south Kolkata in connection with a recruitment scam that allegedly took place at multiple civic bodies between 2014 and 20018, officials of the federal agency said.
Hakim, who is also the mayor of Kolkata, and Mitra, the legislator from Kamarhati in North 24 Parganas district, were both at home when the CBI officers, escorted by central paramilitary force personnel, arrived around 9.30am.
Ten simultaneous raids started at the homes of former chairpersons and officials of several municipalities in the districts, CBI officials said.
Both Hakim and Mitra were arrested by CBI in May, 2021 in the Narada scam. They were later released on bail.
The CBI operations on Sunday started three days after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted marathon raids at 12 locations in Bengal, including the home of food minister Rathin Ghosh, in connection with a recruitment scam.
On Thursday, ED teams simultaneously raided the homes of the minster, the chairpersons of the municipalities at Kamarhati, Baranagar, Madhyamgram, South Dum Dum, North Dum Dum and Panihati (all in North 24 Parganas district) and several officials. The raids continued for more than 14 hours. A bureaucrat’s home at Salt Lake on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata was also raided.
On April 21, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered the CBI to probe the alleged civic body recruitment scam. ED initiated a parallel probe.
{{/usCountry}}On April 21, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered the CBI to probe the alleged civic body recruitment scam. ED initiated a parallel probe.
{{/usCountry}}Justice Gangopadhyay passed the April 21 order during a hearing on the bribe-for-job scam in the education department. A report placed before him by the ED said documents recovered from the home of a suspect, Ayan Sil, indicated that a similar scam took place in numerous civic bodies as well. Sil used to run a recruitment agency that was hired by several civic bodies, the ED told the court.
The TMC government challenged the single bench order but a division bench upheld it.
On June 7, CBI raided 16 locations and seized documents from multiple civic bodies in Nadia, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas districts and also the Salt Lake municipality.
The state government moved the Supreme Court.
On August 22, a Supreme Court division bench headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud dismissed the Bengal government’s petition challenging the Calcutta high court order which said CBI should probe the civic body recruitments and the evidence collected by ED in this matter should be looked into.
Minister Rathin Ghosh’s home at Michael Nagar in North 24 Parganas was raided because he was chairman of the Madhyamgram municipality between 2014 and 2018. He did not comment on the raid.
No TMC leader commented on Sunday’s raids till noon.