• A day after CBI raided several properties of TMC youth leader Vinay Mishra in relation to cattle smuggling and illegal mining of coal, Babul Supriyo has taken a jibe at the West Bengal governing party.

According to the BJP MP, Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee was running many scams in West Bengal and soon, the Alipore jail will turn into TMC’s new party office.

“Everyone has now come to know that Trinamool’s youth leader Vinay Mishra did extortion under bhaipo [Abhishek Banerjee]. He was a bridge between bhaipo and cattle smuggler Lala and coal smuggler Lala,” Supriyo was quoted as saying by Bengali portal The Wall.

“Everyone from Trinamool will go to jail. In the upcoming days, the blue and white Alipore central jail will be Trinamool’s oarty office,” the Asansol lawmaker added.

In a massive operation relating to the cattle-smuggling case in Kolkata, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday carried out searches at three properties of Vinay Mishra.

He is considered close to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee, PTI reported the agency as saying.

The agency issued a look out circular (LOC) against Mishra, sources said, as he is missing. His father has been handed a notice, asking him to appear before the agency.

After arresting a BSF officer Satish Kumar and businessman Enamul Haque, CBI had reportedly come to know about Mishra, who enjoys Z-Category security from the state governement.

The Income Tax department had also raided his office and flats last week. The agencies are also investigating if Mishra had any link with the coal-smuggling case as the CBI also conducted search operations related to it on Thursday.

The raids in connection with coal corruption were run in West Bengal’s Hooghly district. The agency also had a search operation at Howrah’s Slakia and North 24 Parganas’ Konnangar.

The CBI had done a preliminary enquiry which showed that cattle smuggling was rampant along the India-Bangladesh border which is allegedly aided by some corrupt officers of the BSF and Customs receiving illegal gratification from smugglers, they said.

The agency has gone full steam on the cases related to West Bengal with Director RK Shukla asking the team probing Saradha and related ponzi scam to complete filing of all the FIRs before January, 2021.

Last month, the CBI had raided 45 locations across West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar relating to illegal mining and theft of coal from Eastern Coalfield Limited (ECL). The agency alleges a large scale corruption in ECL with the involvement of security and railway officials.