Kolkata, Nov 4 (PTI) Over Rs 1 crore in cash was seized from the office of a rebel TMC MLA in Diamond Harbour in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district on Wednesday, a police officer said.
The police claimed that the seizure was made during a raid at the party office of Magrahat Paschim MLA Samim Ahamed in the Sarisha locality following information received during interrogation of Sumit Roy, the arrested aide of local TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee.
Abhishek Majumdar, Additional Superintendent of Police of Diamond Harbour police district, confirmed the seizure of nearly Rs 1.03 crore in cash at a press conference, and identified the premises as an office of Ahamed.
Roy, who is in police custody in connection with alleged financial irregularities, is being questioned to establish the details of the transactions, police sources added.
The MLA did not respond to queries about the seizure.
Ahamed, who won the Magrahat Paschim seat on a TMC ticket, later abandoned the Mamata Banerjee-led faction of the party and switched over to the TMC legislative party’s rebel camp led by Ritabrata Banerjee.
Although no response to the development was received from the TMC’s rebel camp, the Mamata-led faction lashed out at the Suvendu Adhikari administration, alleging planting of evidence and fabrication of information by abusing the state machinery.
“The @BJP4Bengal government, in collusion with the @WBPolice, is resorting to desperate and disgraceful tactics to manufacture a case that has no credible foundation. The planting of evidence and fabrication of information raise serious questions about the abuse of state machinery for political vendetta,” the party wrote on X.
The party claimed that its representative, Maidul Islam, had lodged a police complaint on May 22 stating that the said office building had been vandalised by miscreants who enjoyed “complete impunity under the watch of the police and the BJP administration”.
“In that very FIR, we had explicitly expressed our apprehension that these same miscreants might attempt to PLANT UNLAWFUL AND INCRIMINATING MATERIALS inside our office premises to FABRICATE a case against us. The reported developments now appear to vindicate those concerns,” the party said on its social media handle.
Accusing the BJP-led Bengal government of maintaining “double standards” in connection with the developments, the Mamata Banerjee faction of the TMC said that while the case relating to the party office attack on May 21 saw “no meaningful police action”, the machinery of the state “appears all too eager to act” against the party when allegations emerge that evidence may have been planted.
“We issue a clear warning: every police official found to have participated in, facilitated, or enabled these unlawful acts will be held accountable through every appropriate legal avenue. Their roles will be documented, and their names will be placed on record in all relevant legal proceedings. We have identified each one of them,” the party said.
Meanwhile, Arka Nag, lawyer and leader of the Mamata-TMC legal cell, claimed that Roy was threatened in custody by the police with “an encounter shoot similar to the two recent killings in the state” if he refused to cooperate and was “pushed inside the room full of cash at gunpoint with a black cover over his face” at the time of the raid.
Roy was taken to the Diamond Harbour Women’s University early Wednesday morning, where the police told him that they would be forced to carry out a third encounter killing if he didn’t cooperate with the investigators, Nag alleged.
Later, four police officers forcibly took him to the room where the cash was being counted, with his face covered by a dark cloth. When he initially refused to enter the room, he was held at gunpoint, the lawyer alleged.
“We have reasons to believe that Roy’s life is at risk in state custody and we are taking legal measures to ensure his safety,” he added.
West Bengal witnessed two police encounter deaths on October 27, involving accused persons in separate murder and rape-murder cases, some 12 hours apart, after they purportedly snatched firearms from officers and opened fire during crime-scene reconstruction.
While the first incident involved a 23-year-old man arrested for the alleged rape and murder of a class 11 student in North 24 Parganas district, the second one resulted in the death of the prime accused in the murder of a BJP worker following an alleged gunfight with CID personnel in Murshidabad district.
Responding to Wednesday’s cash recovery, BJP spokesperson Debjit Sarkar accused TMC leaders of extorting the money from people.
“This is the tip of the iceberg. We believe that only one per cent of the loot has been recovered so far, and the rest remains hidden,” he said.
(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)