This more trouble for jailed Bengal Forest Minister Jyoti Priya Mallick after Enforcement Directorate recovered `10 crore worth bank fixed deposit certificates, scores of property documents, and at least 600 blank stamp papers, according to agency sources on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the ED summoned Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and his father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad for questioning in the Railways land-for-jobs money laundering case probe, official sources said on Wednesday.
While Tejashwi (34) has been asked to depose before the federal probe agency at its office in Delhi on December 22, Prasad (75) has been asked to appear next week on December 27 to record their statements under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The ED had previously questioned Tejashwi for about eight hours in this case on April 11, but this is the first time it has summoned Prasad for joining the probe.
The summons comes following the questioning of an alleged “close associate” of the Lalu family, Amit Katyal, who was arrested by the ED in November.
The alleged scam pertains to the period when Prasad was the Railway Minister in the UPA-1 Government.
Mallick was Bengal Food and Civil Supplies Minister for more than ten years in a row before he was transferred to the Forest Department in 2021 by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The ED officials conducted raids inside Mallick’s Forest Ministry office at Aranya Bhavan and found FD certificates and other documents hidden at various places inside his personal enclosure.
Though it is not clear whether the recovered documents had any connection with Forest Department officials, they did not rule out the possibility, stating that they were investigating all angles.
A close confidant of the Chief Minister, Mallick, a former organisational in-charge of Trinamool Congress’ North 24 Parganas district — that elects 5 MPs and about 35 MLAs — was a few months ago arrested for his alleged role in the multi-crore ration-distribution scam that also saw Bakibur Rehman, a miller, going to jail for his role in the multi-crore scam.
The PDS scam saw thousands of tons of subsidised food grains meant for poorer people being channeled to the open market and even allegedly getting smuggled out to neighbouring Bangladesh. According to sources, the ED raids also had a connection with a preliminary probe last month regarding alleged tendering irregularities in the Zoo Directorate of West Bengal.
has also started enquiring into the detailed project reports (DPRs) of the Directorate for which tenders were floated. There are allegations that the outsourced agencies, which prepared the DPRs for the Directorate, also participated in the tender process with different identities, which was a clear violation of norms as specified in the process.
The ED was also trying to find out whether there were any connections between the Forest Department and the complaints of large-scale denudation of the Mangrove Forests along the Sundarbans in North and South 24 Parganas. In recent years, voices were being raised regarding large-scale cutting of Mangrove forests and conversion of forest lands into fisheries presently controlled by local politicians, mostly alleged “henchmen of a particular minister”.
Incidentally, the Chief Minister had earlier strongly raised her voice against the BJP Government for “playing vendetta politics against TMC”, which was manifest from the arrest of senior Trinamool politicians like Mallick.
Meanwhile, in a parallel development, the Income Tax Department on Wednesday conducted raids at the business premises of Congress-MLA-turned-TMC-legislator Byron Biswas. The raids were conducted at Biswas’ bidi factories, hospitals, and other business facilities in Murshidabad district, sources said, adding that a large number of documents had been recovered from inside the premises. Some cash could also have been recovered, as the latest reports said currency note counting machines were taken inside the raided premises.
