WB textiles minister 'sold' government land to Saradha group

West Bengal textiles minister Shyamaprasad Mukherjee landed himself in trouble when the Enforcement Directorate got access to papers that showed that the minister had sold off government land along with the cement factory to the Saradha group.

Investigators suspect the minister grabbed seven acres of land lying with the state forest department while setting up his cement factory. Later, he sold the factory, which was set up on 15 acres of which seven acres did not belong to him.

ED officials have recovered land documents of the disputed site that belonged to the state forest department and other government agencies.

The mismatch between Saradha boss Sudipta Sen's statement to the ED and that of the state minister over Saradha's acquisition of Landmark Cement Company site in Dhabani village in Bankura's Beliatore prompted investigators to look into the land acquisition details. The disputed land comes under Barjora mouza.

“We found that under JL-128, part numbers 493, 494, 495, 496, 497, 500 and 501 were not owned by the minister,“ a source said.

Since the buyout was made during the Left Front regime, there are chances a few officers and local politicians of the Barjora area might be summoned, ED sources said.

Mukherjee owned the factory before Sen bought it in 2009 at a reportedly exorbitant cost. The deal is already under the scanner of the ED, which has questioned Sen and Mukherjee. Taking leads from the interrogation, a two member ED team led by assistant director Manoj Kumar and officer N K Mosa also paid a visit to the factory site.

Mukherjee had bought a land parcel from Sanjib Banerjee of Beliatore to set up the cement factory, but the factory was sick since inception. Ashis Banerjee, a staffer of the factory , said that around 20 people were working in the factory when it shut down. “We used to get Rs 2,000 as salary when Mukherjee was the owner of the factory. After Saradha took over, our salary was raised to Rs 3,000,“ he added.

Sen has already denied the deal amount that was mentioned by the minister for the Saradha Landmark Cement factory purchase. Mukherjee told ED that he had sold the factory for around Rs 2.81 crore to the Saradha head.



TMC minister's hand in Saradha head's escape: CBI Saradha boss Sudipta Sen's escape plan was chalked out in the presence of a prominent Trinamool Congress leader, long before the day he hopped into an SUV and went on a cross-country run, say CBI sources.

He also had to pay a handsome sum of money to a number of "influential men" who arranged for his stay in other states.

CBI investigators who have picked up the trail say that Sen's escape was monitored by a most trusted group, who directly took orders from him, right from Ranchi to Kashmir.

Enforcement Directorate has already investigated the escape. Earlier, Bengal police had said that Sudipta travelled to Ranchi, but his real destination was Kashmir where aide Arvind Chauhan was preparing the base for running another Saradha-like Ponzi scam.

But CBI sleuths believe Sudipta was told to keep changing base “till alternate arrangements“ could be made by his escape managers.

Accordingly, Sudipta and Saradha director Debjani went by road to Dehradun (some 1,300 km) and then to Haridwar where he passed on instructions to his accountants. One of his specific instructions was to hand over a number of cheques to this Trinamool leader, say CBI sources.

Sudipta and Debjani even offered puja at Haridwar together on Poila Boisakh. The two then went off to the Jim Corbett National Park where they were apparently asked to wait.

However, a "leak" from within forced Sudipta to flee to Haldwani in Uttarakhand (about 140 km from Jim Corbett) to throw Bengal police off track. The two finally ended up in Kashmir, over 1,100 km away. Central agencies are piecing together Sen's activities in the days even before his escape.