An IPS officer was quizzed today for the first time by CBI in connection to the coalsmuggling racket. Tathagata Basu, deputy commissioner in the Chandernagore police commissionerate and former police chief of Hooghly, was quizzed by the CBI at Nizam Palace today.

A CBI source said interrogation summon for the IPS officer was issued when clues emerged during the investigation, indicating the alleged smugglers had used the Hooghly route to smuggle coal when Basu was the commissioner of Hooghly. He was quaestioned why no action was taken against the perpetrators.

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“The said coals were found to have been smuggled from Asansol, Jamuria and Ranigunj coal belts and took Hooghly routes. CBI wants to find out the alleged links between the IPS officer and the smugglers,” a source claimed.

The CBI apart, ED too joined the probe to unearth the money trail as the agency had conducted searches in at least 12 locations including Kolkata, Hooghly, Lake town, and some parts of North 24 Parganas, recently.

But the joint effort to nab the kingpin, Anup Majhi alias Lala, in the coal smuggling racket hardly had any success so far despite arrest warrants against him by a special CBI court at Asansol which also declared him an absconder.

The CBI, meanwhile, was learnt to have issued a fresh summon to Trinamul Youth Congress general secretary Binoy Mishra asking him to depose on 20 January . Mishra’s three flats had been raided by CBI. He was however “untraceable” for which a lookout notice was issued.