ED summons Abhishek Banerjee again for questioning in Bengal coal smuggling case

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The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Thursday accused the Centre of carrying out political vendetta after Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and her party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and his wife were summoned again by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to its Delhi office on March 21 and 22 for questioning in the coal smuggling case.

Abhishek Banerjee and his wife Rujira had filed a petition before the Delhi high court last week, challenging the ED’s summons, but it was turned down, ED officials said.

In a parallel development, a special court of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at Asansol in Bengal’s West Burdwan district on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant in the same case against TMC’s former youth front leader and businessman Vinay Mishra who renounced his Indian citizenship in December 2020 and became a citizen of Vanuatu, a small island country in the south-west Pacific.

The CBI had prayed for the warrant on Tuesday, telling the court that Mishra is a prime suspect. His brother Vikas was arrested earlier by the ED and named in the agency’s first chargesheet in August last year.

The CBI and ED are conducting parallel probes into the coal smuggling.

CBI officials said that in order to execute the arrest warrant the agency will have to initiate extradition talks with the Vanuatu government. India has an extradition treaty with the Republic of Vanuatu, said an officer.

Taking on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday, several TMC leaders said Abhishek has been targeted again to keep Mamata Banerjee under pressure.

“The politics of vendetta started as soon as the civic body elections were over. The BJP could not form a board in even one of the 108 civic bodies. It will also lose the upcoming assembly by-poll in Ballygunge and the Lok Sabha by-poll in Asansol. The probe agencies were used in the same manner during the assembly polls last year although the BJP could not reap any political dividend,” said state education minister Bratya Basu.

The chief minister, too, raised the issue in her speech in the assembly on Wednesday saying central probe agencies take orders from BJP leaders.

The CBI registered the case in November 2020. It is alleged that illegally mined coal, worth several thousand crores of rupees, have been sold in the black market over several years by a racket operating in the western parts of West Bengal where the Eastern Coalfields Limited runs several mines. It has also been alleged that proceeds from the coal trade went to political leaders.

The ED questioned Abhishek Banerjee for almost nine hours in Delhi on September 6 last year. He was summoned for the second time on September 8 but Banerjee did not visit the ED office and informed the agency that he was unable to travel from Kolkata at such short notice.

On September 6, Banerjee threw a challenge at the BJP saying if the ED has any evidence against him, it should be made public.

“They called me to Delhi although the case is registered in Bengal. If anybody can prove that I have accepted even ten paisa from anyone I will voluntarily walk to the gallows and hang myself,” Banerjee had said in Delhi last year.

The ED also wanted to question Rujira Banerjee in September last year. She did not fly to Delhi citing the risk a mother of two infants might face while travelling during the Covid-19 pandemic. She wrote a mail to the agency saying it would be convenient for her if ED officers came to her Kolkata residence.

Rujira Banerjee was questioned by the CBI in February last year at Abhishek Banerjee’s south Kolkata residence. In March last year, the CBI questioned Rujira’s sister Maneka Gambhir and the latter’s husband Ankush Arora and father-in-law Pawan Arora.

Dismissing the TMC’s allegation, Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said: “The BJP is not conducting the probes. The agencies are doing their job following court orders. The CBI and ED decide who will be grilled and when.”

The ED filed its first chargesheet in the coal smuggling case at a special court in Delhi in August last year, naming Vinay Mishra’s brother and former officer-in-charge of Bankura police station, Ashok Mishra, as prime accused. The chargesheet, however, did not mention Abhishek Banerjee.

The ED summoned three Indian Police Service officers, Shyam Singh, Gyanwant Singh and S Selvamurugan to Delhi in September last year.

After remaining untraceable for months and declared an absconder by the CBI, Mishra informed the Calcutta high court on June 7 last year that he had relinquished Indian citizenship. According to media reports in the Republic of Vanuatu, he acquired citizenship against payment.

Vanuatu offers citizenship against payment of 130,000 USD for a single applicant and 180,000 USD for a family of four. No high-profile suspect in Bengal has ever left the country in this manner.

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