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Constable deployed for TMC leader’s security leads CBI to ‘money trail’ in Bengal
Back-to-back CBI raids have yielded several land and property-related documents. Hossain, who is now in judicial custody, could not explain how he managed to acquire so much wealth on a police constable’s salary, CBI officials said
A West Bengal police constable deployed as one of the bodyguards of Trinamool Congress (TMC) Birbhum district unit president Anubrata Mondal, has led Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers to a money trail that is suspected to be linked to the cattle and coal smuggling cases, officials aware of the development claimed. Both cases are being investigated by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Sehgal Hossain was arrested by the CBI in Kolkata on June 9 after he was summoned and questioned for hours as a witness.
Back-to-back CBI raids have yielded several land and property-related documents. Hossain, who is now in judicial custody, could not explain how he managed to acquire so much wealth on a police constable’s salary, CBI officers said on condition of anonymity. The raids also indicated that Hossain’s family has a huge amount of gold jewellery, the officers added.
The CBI has traced three apartments on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata where value of real estate is on the rise. Probe by the Central agency has indicated that two of these apartments were registered in the name of a close relative of Hossain while a woman who worked for his family might have been shown as the owner of the third one.
CBI officers said they also raided Hossain’s ‘huge house’ at Domkal in Murshidabad district, from where he hails, and another apartment at Bolpur town in Birbhum.
The officials said they have reasons to believe that a huge amount of money was spent to buy land and property at Domkal as well.
“It is suspected that while Hossain was a front, the money was invested by other people,” an officer, who did not want to be named, said.
According to the advertisement for constable recruitment published by the state government in March this year, the salary of a new recruit is ₹22,700 and it can go up to ₹58,500 before retirement. The minimum educational qualification required for the job is a class 10 final examination certificate.
The last raid at Sehgal’s Bolpur home, an apartment in a residential complex, yielded some more documents on Wednesday.
The CBI team has got leads which indicate that Hossain might have been involved in collecting cash from different sources.
Hossain’s suspected involvement in the two alleged scams has also brought under scrutiny the death of his three-year-old daughter and one of his friends in a car accident in Birbhum in April. The car collided with a dumper when Hossain and his family were returning home after shopping for Eid.
Hossain and his wife were in a second car that was following the first one. Shortly before the accident, Hossain left the first car and joined his wife, said a Birbhum district police officer who did not want to be named.
Considered a close aide of chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the only district president to be inducted in the TMC’s national working committee, Anubrata Mondal faced the CBI in Kolkata for questioning in the cattle smuggling case for the first time on May 19, after avoiding the agency’s summons for 13 months.
He was interrogated for more than two hours at the CBI office at Nizam Palace in the presence of joint director Pankaj Srivastava who flew down from Delhi. Srivastava was put in charge of the CBI’s Kolkata zone in 2018 but was transferred to Delhi in July, 2020.
N Venugopal was posted as joint director of the Kolkata office on June 13. He has been put in charge of all the important anti-corruption cases, officials said.
Hossain’s arrest has prompted the opposition to target the TMC.
“The probes show how deep corruption has gone during the TMC regime,” said Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.
“The matter is under investigation. We cannot comment,” said TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh.
Several state police officers and officers of the Border Security Force (BSF) and Customs department are suspects in the cattle smuggling case. Two BSF officers and a state police inspector were arrested earlier.
The probe into cattle smuggling gained momentum following the arrest of Muhammad Enamul Haque, one of the prime accused, by the ED in Delhi on February 18. Haque, who was arrested by the CBI in November 2020, was released on bail after he moved the Supreme Court. He was named in a CBI charge sheet filed at the Asansol court in West Burdwan district in 2021.
In the coal smuggling case, chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has been interrogated by the ED twice in Delhi while his wife, Rujira, and members of her family have been interrogated by the CBI in Kolkata.
The CBI registered the coal smuggling case in November 2020. It is alleged that illegally mined coal, worth several thousand crores of rupees, has been sold in the black market over the years by a racket operating in the western parts of West Bengal where the Eastern Coalfields Limited runs several mines. It is alleged that proceeds from the coal trade went to political leaders.
On March 16, a special CBI court at Asansol in West Burdwan district issued an arrest warrant in the coal smuggling case 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 Asansol court declared Mishra an absconder in early-May after the CBI informed the court that the warrant could not be executed because he is untraceable.
Mishra’s brother, Vikas, was arrested earlier by the ED and named in the agency’s first chargesheet filed in August last year.
