India News | Curiosity Draws Throngs of Onlookers as CBI Raids WB Law Minister's Flat
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. Curious onlookers thronged the Raj Bhavan's annexe, home to members of West Bengal's cabinet, as officials from the Central Bureau of Investigations swooped down on the flat of Law Minister Moloy Ghatak for a 7-hour long search.
Kolkata, Sep 7 (PTI) Curious onlookers thronged the Raj Bhavan's annexe, home to members of West Bengal's cabinet, as officials from the Central Bureau of Investigations swooped down on the flat of Law Minister Moloy Ghatak for a 7-hour long search.
People from nearby offices and markets were joined by hordes of camera persons and reporters outside the tree-lined blue-coloured building in which the Ghatak family lived and where the CBI searched virtually every nook and cranny for evidence to be used against the Law Minister in an alleged coal smuggling case.
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The raid undertaken in five places - including three properties linked to the Ghataks in Asansol and one in Kolkata's tony Lake Gardens - started early in the morning.
"It's not every day that you get to see the police raiding the house of a minister, that too his official residence. This is a tale I will be able to recount to my next generation," said Swapan Ghosh of Santragachi village in Howrah district who had come to the nearby Chandni Chowk market to buy electronic goods, obviously enjoying the spectacle.
As photographers jostled to get ‘good spots' to shoot the raid, some sympathised with Ghatak, while others mocked the politician.
"Ki obostha minister der! Oder o police er gutho khete hoi ! (What a turn for ministers! Even they have to face the police!)," said Tarun Nashkar, 38, a driver from Kolkata's Joka suburb who had come to a government office on an errand.
Former chief minister Jyoti Basu used to stay in the same apartment building at one point of time.
Sales at a nearby milk kiosk went up briskly as the gathered people helped ring up the cash registers by buying soft drinks and ice cream to sustain them as they kept watch.
After about 7 hours of the raid, at 3.45 pm, three cars ferrying about a dozen CBI sleuths and their accompanying security personnel, zoomed out of the premises, sparking off a media scramble.
Soon after Ghatak left in his official car sporting a capped blue beacon, tight-lipped with folded hands as media persons tried to get a television "byte" from the ‘man of the moment'.
Earlier in the day, a CBI official told PTI: "As his (Ghatak's) name surfaced in the coal smuggling scam, we need to find out what was his role in it. We have evidence of Ghatak's involvement in the scam."
The agency is also conducting searches at one of Ghatak's close associates' residences in Kolkata's Alipore area and another in Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas district.
Ghatak, the Asansol Uttar MLA, had appeared once before the Enforcement Directorate at its Delhi office for questioning in connection with the coal pilferage case.
He, however, skipped several other summonses of the ED in connection with the multi-crore coal pilferage scam related to the Eastern Coalfields Ltd mines in the state's Kunustoria and Kajora areas.
The CBI had registered an FIR in November 2020 against the alleged kingpin of the pilferage racket, Anup Manjhi alias Lala, ECL general managers Amit Kumar Dhar and Jayesh Chandra Rai, ECL security chief Tanmay Das, Kunustoria area security inspector Dhananjay Rai and Kajor area security in-charge Debashish Mukherjee.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)