The Enforcement directorate (ED) today quizzed the former food and civil supplies minister after taking him in its custody following his release from the hospital last night.
Enforcement Directorate [IANS]
The Enforcement directorate (ED) today quizzed the former food and civil supplies minister after taking him in its custody following his release from the hospital last night. Simultaneously, another team today examined his two personal assistants (PAs), the present and the former, Amit Dey and Avijit Das, respectively yet again at its CGO complex office in Salt Lake. Today was the first time that the central agency could interrogate him, getting him in custody following a court order.
Sources in the know claimed that the investigators asked the former food minister on his alleged link with the arrested businessman and a close aide to him Bakibur Rahaman. They wanted to know how Rahaman used his alleged influence to work in amassing such a huge property and why he had not taken any steps to arrest the minister concerned even when the state police had filed FIRs in the alleged irregularity.
Sources added that the ten questions were prepared and sent from the agency’s national headquarter at New Delhi. He was specially questioned about the functioning of the state food and supplies department between 2017 and 2019, when corruption was at its peak. Mallick was the state food and supplies minister from 2011 and 2021.
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They were prepared on the basis of documents accumulated by the ED sleuths during the course of raids and search operations as well as on the basis of the statements given by the others related to the case, especially the arrested Kolkata-based businessman Bakibur Rahman. Meanwhile, in the civic body recruitment scam, the agency interrogated a former IAS officer in the state municipal affairs department.
The central agency got the whiff of him during a raid at the Salt Lake office of Ayan Sil and then carried out a search operation at his Labony residence in Salt Lake along with the former chairman of South Dum Dum municipality. In another development ED today conducted raids on the residence of a chartered accountant in Howrah allegedly in connection with teachers recruitment scam.
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