Express News Service
KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal is facing the heat of Central agencies probing multiple cases in the state. While the CBI is investigating four cases, all of them based on the orders of Calcutta High Court, the Enforcement Directorate is looking into a money laundering case which allegedly involves the chief minister’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee.
The TMC government has been opposing probes by the Central agencies into all these cases. In the latest development, the state on Thursday moved the division bench of Calcutta High Court challenging a single bench order transferring to the CBI the probe into a Congress councillor’s murder in Purulia.
The state government told the HC that a special investigation team constituted by it had almost wrapped up the case and at this stage, there was no point in transferring the case to the CBI. Another high-profile case which the CBI took over recently is the massacre of nine people in Birbhum district.
The other two cases being probed by the CBI are the alleged irregularity in recruitment through School Service Commission (SSC) and a cattle smuggling racket involving a TMC leader and a paramilitary official. Besides, armed with the high court order, the ED is probing into a money laundering case in connection with coal pilferage in which Abhishek Banerjee and his wife, Rujira, have been summoned on several occasions.
“This is for the first time the state government is facing investigations by the Central agencies in so many cases at a time. Before 2011, Mamata used to call for CBI probe into various incidents during the Left Front rule. She had used it as a political tool to attack the then ruling party,” said a senior TMC leader, adding, “Now she never misses an opportunity to attack the BJP-led Centre alleging it was using the agencies for political vendetta.”
BJP state chief Sukanta Majumdar said the HC ordering CBI probe into these cases reflected that the judiciary doesn’t have faith on the state police. “The worst massacre, malpractices and smuggling of cattle establish the sorry state of law and order, and there was no way left other than the court’s intervention,” he said.
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