The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday arrested Trinamool Congress leader and party’s Birbhum district president Anubrata Mandal from his Bolpur residence in connection with the cattle smuggling scam.

The CBI officials reached Mandal’s Bolpur residence at around 9.50 a.m. escorted by a huge contingent of central armed forces personnel. After a little over an hour of questioning, they arrested him. The arrest was made after the Trinamool Congress strongman ducked the central agency summons for ten consecutive times.

This morning, the CBI officials first served him a notice under Section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) that allows any investigating officer to arrest a person without an order from magistrate and without a warrant if that person has been concerned in any cognizable offence or against whom there is credible information.

According to CBI sources, Mandal did not cooperate with the investigating officials during the brief interaction over little more than an hour in the morning. Finally, the officials arrested him.

He is being taken to a local camp of CBI for further questioning and in probability he will be presented at a lower court in the state a little later.

While being brought out of his Bolpur residence, Mandal did not interact with the media. An apparently devastated Mandal, sporting a yellow kurta, came out escorted by the CBI and central armed forces and silently got into the vehicle of the investigating agency. Certain documents were also seized from his residence at the time of his arrest.

It is learnt that after the Trinamool Congress’s Birbhum district president ignored ten consecutive summons, the central agency’s top brass decided not to wait anymore and instead reach his door steps on Thursday morning only.

“The decision to reach his doorsteps was taken on Wednesday evening only, after we became definite how desperate Mandal is to avoid the summons for which he even got a bed-rest advice by pressuring a doctor of the Bolpur Sub-divisional Hospital. We even spoke to the doctor concerned who said that he was forced to give the bed-rest advice on plain paper both from his higher authorities as well as Mandal. So, before he could adopt any further method to duck interrogation, we decided to reach his doorsteps,” a CBI official said.