Anubrata Mondal, the TMC’s leader, was on Thursday ordered by an Asansol court to be held in CBI custody till August 20 in connection with a livestock smuggling case. The judge only granted CBI custody for nine days, despite their request for 14 days. He will probably be sent to Kolkata tonight, where he will be questioned at the CBI’s Nizam Palace headquarters.
The West Bengal livestock smuggling case is being looked at by the central agency.
The CBI’s top brass decided not to wait any longer and went to the TMC’s Birbhum district president’s home on Thursday morning after he disregarded 10 summonses from the agency in a row. Both the team of Central Armed Forces soldiers and the team of CBI officers, led by the agency’s superintendent (anti-corruption section), Rajeev Mishra, arrived in Bolpur late on Wednesday night.
The CBI team and central Armed Forces arrived at Mandal’s house at around 9.50 a.m. The entire residential structure was first surrounded by the centre military from all directions. The CBI officers were then split into two squads. The main front gate was used by one squad to enter the property, and the other team used the other gate at the back side of the building.
Only when we realised how anxious Mandal is to dodge the summons—for which he even received a bed-rest recommendation after being pressured by a doctor at the Bolpur Sub-divisional Hospital—did we decide to show up at his doorway on Wednesday evening. We even spoke with the concerned doctor, who confirmed that Mandal and his higher authority had pushed him to provide the bed-rest recommendation in plain writing. We thus decided to go to his residence before he could employ any other strategy to avoid questioning, a CBI officer said.
It remains to be seen if the central agency sleuths will finally arrest Mandal or be content with interviewing him at his home. According to the most recent information available, the CBI sleuths were simply questioning Mandal within his apartment.
Once inside the house, the CBI instructed the private security guards stationed there to leave and gave the central Armed Forces Soldiers the order to bar anyone from entering. All cell phones belonging to everyone present in the building during the operation have also been confiscated by CBI agents.
The CBI team has a court warrant authorising search operations at Mandal’s home.
