New Delhi: The West Bengal Police have recovered at least Rs 28.5 crore in cash and 15 kilograms of gold in searches at premises linked to a stone-quarry businessman in Birbhum associated with the former Trinamool strongman of the region Anubrata Mondal, ThePrint has learnt. The searches covered Mohammed Nazibuddin, alias Tullu Mondal, and his relative Minar Mondal in Birbhum as part of a probe into a sand-mining case, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said on social media platform X.
By Wednesday afternoon, Adhikari had made public that Rs 5.5 crore was recovered from the premises linked to Mondal, known in the region for his proximity to Anubrata, who was Mamata Banerjee’s close aide and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) district president in Birbhum.
Anubrata was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2022 as part of their respective probes into his expansive cattle-smuggling racket. By late evening, Birbhum Superintendent of Police Vidit Raj Bhundesh said the cash haul had risen to Rs 28.5 crore, with counting still underway.
After his release from jail on bail, Anubrata has been a shadow of his past, and has since joined the rebel TMC faction led by Ritabrata Banerjee, which reappointed him as party president in Birbhum district.
“West Bengal Govt’s ongoing drive against the corrupt will go on with ‘Zero Tolerance Policy against Corruption’ as our guiding principle. Let it be unequivocally clear: no person with a chequered past who has amassed wealth through the exploitation of public resources and hobnobbing with the then ruling political party will be spared,” Adhikari wrote on X, making the raids against Tullu Mondal and his accomplices an example of his government’s campaign against mafia syndicates.
Sources in the state police said that the counting machines were still working at full capacity, and that the overall recovery figure is likely to be much higher than the current figure. “The counting and scrutiny of the cash and documents related to assets are still underway. A detailed statement will be issued based on the final outcome,” a West Bengal Police officer told ThePrint.
“Birbhum district police got information—the source appeared to be reasonably true—that a huge amount of illegally amassed cash and gold which belongs to a syndicated organised group led by Mohammed Najibuddin alias Tullu Mondal of Mohammed Bazar Police Station area, was concealed at a house under the same jurisdiction. A police team worked on the information, and after following all legal formalities, conducted a search and seizure operation. From a house belonging to one Minar Mondal, police has recovered so far Rs 28.5 crore of cash and 15 kilograms of different sizes and denominations of gold bars,” SP Bhundesh told a press briefing late Wednesday.
Mondal saga
Tullu Mondal’s name first came into the reckoning with the CBI and ED probes into Anubrata Mondal in 2022. His premises were among the dozens raided by the CBI in August 2022 to identify the “facilitators” of Anubrata Mondal in Birbhum.
As the ED opened its own money-laundering probe to identify the flow of illicit funds, the agency grilled Tullu Mondal for more than six hours at its New Delhi headquarters in connection with a cattle-smuggling case.
As soon as Tullu Mondal returned to Kolkata after questioning by the ED, he was taken into custody by the Birbhum district police in November 2022 as part of a probe into a case of assault and criminal intimidation.
According to police records, Tullu was booked in a case filed for a clash in the Mohammad Bazaar area on 3 October that year that had left one person injured. As the injured person had later succumbed to injuries, a murder section was added in the case, and Tullu was nabbed from Kolkata, sparking allegations from the Opposition that his arrest by the local police was to protect him from questioning by Central agencies.
The Birbhum district police never charged him in the case, however, and he walked out of jail. The trial is currently underway in the local court.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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