The cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal took a dramatic turn on Tuesday morning as the state police presented Trinamool Congress strongman and the party’s Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal at a lower court seeking his 14-day custody in relation to a fresh FIR.

The FIR was filed on Monday evening in an attempt to murder case.

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The development has set rolling speculation as on Monday afternoon only the Rouse Avenue Court in New Delhi granted the production warrant to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to take Anubrata Mondal to the national capital and question him in connection with the cattle smuggling scam at the agency’s headquarters there.

On Tuesday morning as Anubrata Mondal sporting a shawl and escorted by a huge contingent of state police came out of the Asansol Special Correctional Home in West Burdwan district. Soon it became clear that he was being taken to a lower court at Dubrajpur in Birbhum district about 53 kilometers from Asansol.

Later it was learnt that on Monday evening one erstwhile Trinamool Congress panchayat member, Shibthakur Mondal filed a complaint against Mondal at Dubrajpur police station accusing the latter of attempt to murder last year.

The local police station filed an FIR immediately incorporating charges under Section 307 (punishment for attempt to murder) of the IPC and accordingly sought custody of Mondal from Asansol Special Correctional Home and reached the lower court at Dubrajpur. As per the latest information available, Mondal has already reached the court at Dubrajpur. The hearing in this particular matter will come up for hearing soon.

The complainant, Shibthakur Mondal, told the mediapersons that before the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls in 2021 he decided to shift to the BJP. “On hearing that I was summoned by Anubrata Mondal at the Dubrajpur party office where he tried to choke me. So, on Monday evening I filed a complaint at the Dubrajpur police station on this count,” he said.

When asked why it took him so long to take the decision to file the complaint, he said that since Anubrata Mondal was already in judicial custody related to the cattle- smuggling scam, he thought it as the opportune moment to file the complaint on the incident that happened around 18 months back.

BJP state spokesperson in West Bengal, Samik Bhattacharya and the CPI(M) central committee member, Sujan Chakraborty said that from the development it was clear that Trinamool Congress and the state police are hand-in-glove in hatching the fresh conspiracy to prevent the ED from taking Mondal to New Delhi. Till the time the report was filed there was no reaction from the Trinamool Congress on this count.