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'Wont' be cowed down,' says Abhishek Banerjee as CBI seeks to question wife
The agency sought to serve notice to his wife for questioning in connection with the coal smuggling case.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday visited the south Kolkata residence of Trinamool Congress (TMC) Lok Sabha member and chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee to serve notice to his wife for questioning in connection with the coal smuggling case that is being probed by the agency.
Banerjee’s wife, Rujira, was not present at the Harish Mukherjee Road building, named Santiniketan, when the five-member CBI team arrived around 2 pm. The couple tied the knot in 2012 and have two children, a boy and a girl.
A huge police contingent was quickly deployed around the house which remains heavily guarded round the year.
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Banerjee retaliated by taking to Twitter and saying that he will not be "cowed down" by such an event.
Banerjee tweeted an image of the notice that CBI additional superintendent of police Umesh Kumar left at his residence.
"At 2pm today, the CBI served a notice in the name of my wife. We have full faith in the law of the land. However, if they think they can use these ploys to intimidate us, they are mistaken. We are not the ones who would ever be cowed down," Banerjee tweeted.
The notice, served under section 160 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.PC), said a CBI team would come to his residence and question his wife at 3 pm. The case was registered on November 27 last year.
“A CBI team did go Abhishek’s home but they could not serve any notice. The team went back. The officers said they would come again. It is known that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will try to scare us before the polls. We are not worried” said TMC Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy.
Since Assembly elections in Bengal will be held in March-April, the CBI team's visit raised the political heat.
“This is part of a well-prepared script. The entire BJP leadership has targeted the chief minister and Abhishek Banerjee. If the CBI is so keen on cracking cases why doesn’t it arrest BJP leader Mukul Roy in the Narada case or Suvendu Adhikari in the Saradha chit fund case. Both are suspects,” said TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh.
On December 31, the CBI raided three residences of businessman and TMC’s youth front general secretary Vinay Mishra in connection with the coal smuggling case. Mishra is missing since then and has been declared an absconder by the agency.
It is alleged that illegally mined coal, worth several thousand crores of rupees, have been sold in the black market over several years by a racket operating in the western parts of West Bengal where the Eastern Coalfields Limited runs several mines. Another prime suspect, Anup Majhi, alias Lala, is also absconding.
In early December, the CBI also raided the home and office of Ganesh Bagaria, a Kolkata-based chartered accountant.
Ever since the probe started in September, the BJP has been alleging that the money from the sales was whitewashed through shell companies and siphoned into the funds of the ruling party. The BJP has also alleged that the main beneficiary is Abhishek Banerjee.
Banerjee is the president of the TMC’s youth wing. On July 20, he appointed 15 general secretaries, including Mishra.
“The CBI probe will unearth the involvement of more TMC leaders in different scams. The entire state knows that ruling party leaders are involved in the coal scam,” BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said on Sunday.
