By – Shrishti Mehra
ED also supplied materials totaling over 3,000 pages, in addition to the charge sheet filed under PMLA.
KOLKATA: The Enforcement Directorate filed its first charge sheet in the alleged PDS scam in West Bengal on Tuesday, naming forest minister Jyotipriya Mallick and rice mill owner and hotelier Bakibur Rahaman among the accused in its 168-page document at Kolkata’s Bankshall court, according to federal agency officials.
Along with the charge sheet filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), ED supplied materials totaling over 3,000 pages.
The alleged scheme, in which subsidized food grains intended for the PDS system were diverted to the open market for sale, occurred between 2011 – when the Trinamool Congress (TMC) came to power for the first time – and 2021.
Mallick was detained on October 27 by ED after being questioned for nearly 20 hours.
According to the ED, Mallick appointed his wife, Manidipa, and daughter, Priyadarshini, as directors of three shell firms that were closed down in the last year.
“The agency informed the court that food grain worth at least Rs 400 crore is suspected of being sold in the market.” “The ED stated that all three shell companies run by Mallick, as well as seven more launched by Rahaman, were used to launder the sale proceeds,” a lawyer who attended the court on condition of anonymity said.
Additionally, the ED informed the court that bank records showed ₹36 crore had been deposited into Mallick and his family members’ bank accounts. The ED has identified Rahaman, the proprietor of a rice mill, as a major participant in the purported grain stealing operation. Rahaman was arrested on October 14.
The ED further informed the court that Rahaman provided the minister’s companies a 9 crore interest-free loan in 2016-17 without any security, and that the money was later moved to the minister’s wife and daughter’s bank accounts.
Mallick and Rahaman have been placed in judicial detention. Mallick’s lawyers have not sought bail for him, despite his claims of being critically ill.
The TMC has not taken any action against him, in contrast to the party’s hasty decision to remove then-education minister Partha Chatterjee from the state government after his detention in the school hiring case in July 2022. After images of a collection of money bills discovered from a flat claimed linked to him surfaced, Partha Chatterjee was suspended from the party and removed from all party offices.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has targeted the TMC, claiming that more ministers and leaders will be imprisoned in the coming days.
“Whether it’s Anubrata Mondal, who was arrested in the cattle smuggling case, or Mallick, it’s clear that TMC leaders and ministers made a fortune while ordinary people suffered.” “More leaders and ministers will be arrested in the coming days,” claimed Sukanta Majumdar, chief of the BJP’s Bengal unit.
TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh stated, “The ED and CBI are carrying forward the BJP’s political agenda.” Those who are guilty will always face punishment, but there is no reason to believe that whatever the ED claims in its chargesheet is absolute truth.”