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ED arrests TMC leader Anubrata Mondal’s CA in cattle smuggling case
Manish Kothari is alleged to have helped senior TMC leader Anubrata Mondal siphon money through shell companies.
KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Anubrata Mondal’s chartered accountant Manish Kothari was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday evening in the West Bengal cattle smuggling case, officials of the federal agency said.
Kothari, who was questioned several times in Bengal last year, was summoned to ED’s Delhi office on Tuesday morning.
According to ED, Kothari helped the senior TMC leader siphon money through shell companies. He was formally placed under arrest after several discrepancies were found in his statements, an official said.
The official said the agency has also summoned Anubrata Mondal’s daughter Sukanya to its Delhi office for questioning on Wednesday.
Sukanya Mondal was summoned to Delhi twice last year. She told ED that she knows nothing about the properties and monetary transactions linked to her and her father.
Sukanya Mondol, a primary school teacher appointed by the state government in 2011 when the TMC first came to power, is the director of two companies and owns a rice mill in Birbhum’s Bolpur town where the Mondals live.
Abubrata Mondal was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on August 11, 2022, and was named in CBI’s fourth charge sheet filed on October 7. Mondal has been kept at the Asansol correctional home till March 7, when he was brought to Delhi on orders of a Delhi court in an ED case.
CBI officials allege that Mondal was linked to 168 land and property deeds executed in or after 2014. At least two dozen of these properties belong to him, the federal agency alleges, while the remaining 144 properties are in the names of his relatives, aides and their kin.
CBI suspects that profits from cattle smuggling were used to buy the properties.
TMC has not taken any disciplinary action against Mondal who is president of the party’s Birbhum district unit.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee targeted the ED and CBI several times after Mondal’s arrest.
Mondal’s former bodyguard, Sehgal Hossain, a state police constable, was arrested by CBI on June 10 last year. He is lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail as a suspect in a related money laundering case.
