Abhishek congratulates bypoll winners
After the clean sweep of Trinamul Congress in the bypolls in Bengal, an elated Abhishek Banerjee, who is also the party’s national general secretary took to social media and wrote on X-handle about the victory.
Following marathon raids by the Enforcement Directorate since Tuesday, the central agency arrested a local businessman named Biswajit Das, said to be close to arrested Trinamul Congress leader Shankar Adhya, on Wednesday in connection with the ration distribution case.
This was the ED’s fourth arrest in the PDS case. The Enforcement Directorate, in pursuit of alleged close aides to businessman Bakibur Rahaman, the main accused in the PDS scam case, had earlier arrested the former state food and civil supplies minister, Jyotipriya Mallick. Mr Das, known to be close to the arrested Trinamul leader Addhya, a former chairman of Bongaon municipality, and also to arrested businessman Bakibur Rahaman, had been subjected to a marathon grilling since Tuesday evening at his residence at IB Block, Salt Lake.
He was formally arrested on Wednesday morning and is likely to be produced before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Kolkata and the ED counsel will seek his custody. Mr Das, claimed a source in the know, ran forex exchange company besides dealing in gold ornaments. He owns a jewellery shop. It is suspected that Mr Das was a partner of Mr Adhya in the process of divers ion of the proceeds of the alleged ration distribution scam, first by converting them into foreign currenci es and subsequently park them abroad, especially in Dubai and Bangl adesh, through the hawala route. Mr Das’s name is said to have surfaced during the course of the interrogation of Mr Adhya and his family members.
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