Sleuths dig into Siddiqui-TMC ties

KOLKATA: Aminuddin Siddiqui, the publisher of Kalom who is believed to be close to at least two senior Trinamool leaders, was questioned for more than an hour by CBI on Monday. The sleuths said their questioning was related to his stakes at Kalom newspaper and his relation with the ruling party leaders.
“His name had first cropped up during the questioning of former Trinamool leader Asif Khan.We are now studying his statement to check the facts. If we find discrepancies, we might need to question him again,” said a senior CBI officer.
According to CBI sources, Siddiqui cooperated with them on Monday. While coming out, Siddiqui, who is also the editor of Saradha-owned newspaper Azad Hind, chose to take questions unlike Trinamool leader Shankudeb Panda who refused to speak to the media. “I was asked to clarify certain things. We had not spoken about Kalom,” he said while coming out of the CGO complex. Siddiqui’s aides claimed that he has no fear as he has nothing to hide.
CBI sources said that Siddiqui’s name was mentioned by Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Hasan Ahmed Imran when he deposed before the central agencies earlier this year. Earlier in an interview, Imran spoke about how Siddiqui introduced him to Saradha boss Sudipta Sen. “In 1981, I, along with my friends, started a community newspaper called Kalom. But, over the period of time, we started facing financial difficulty in bringing out the newspaper. A senior person called up Aminuddin Siddiqui, who took me to Sudipta Sen and convinced him to take over the Urdu newspaper. In this way, I met Sudipta Sen. He took over our newspaper. There were 26 shareholders and everybody agreed. Since then, I met him (Sen) only four-five times,” the MP had claimed.
The sleuths wanted to know from Siddiqui who this “senior person” was who had actually called up Siddiqui in the first place and asked him to involve Sen. Apart from this, the CBI sleuths are also likely to ascertain if Siddiqui has anything to do with a land in Bhangar which was to be developed by the Saradha Group. This is part of the wider CBI-ED focus on land owned by Saradha in and around Kolkata.
While interrogating Sen, the agencies have learnt about three farmhouses in Baruipur and Sonarpur that the Saradha chief had purchased in 2011. That year, the Saradha Group had done brisk deposit-mobilizing business and spread its operations in Bengal and adjoining states.