Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday, June 13, in connection with the school recruitment scam. This summons comes after the ED questioned Abhishek’s wife, Rujira Banerjee, for three hours earlier in the day in relation to the coal pilferage case.
Abhishek, in a statement, said he would not be able to appear for questioning due to his party’s election campaign for the upcoming panchayat polls. He alleged that the summons was not coincidental and that his wife had just left the ED offices when the summons was issued to him. Mamata Banerjee, the chief of TMC and Bengal CM, stated that the central agencies were not servants of the BJP but of the country.
Rujira’s questioning follows 18 days after Abhishek was questioned by the CBI in the school recruitments scam. After her questioning, her legal team indicated she was likely to take her case to the Supreme Court, alleging contempt of court and that the ED stopped her from traveling abroad.
The ED sent a team of officers from Delhi to Kolkata to interrogate Rujira. The agency claimed that Rujira was asked to answer 30 questions, several of which concerned her proposed travel to Dubai, and that they placed a three-page questionnaire about transactions involving her bank account between 2014-2019. The investigators questioned her about WhatsApp messages between two phone numbers and wanted to know whether Rujira had any knowledge of an account in Thailand.
The summons to Abhishek came on the same day as the announcement of the panchayat polls, and the TMC leader was in the final stages of his Jono Sanyog Yatra. Abhishek’s wife had left the ED offices minutes before the summons was issued, which Abhishek alleges was not a mere coincidence.
CM Mamata Banerjee referred to a media trial and said that justice and evidence were essential. We can also file for defamation. Where is the evidence (of the accusations)?… Do you think CBI and ED are tigers, and that everyone is scared of them? They have their limitations also, she said.
The ED has been investigating the coal pilferage case since November 2020 and has arrested several people, including Anup Majee, the prime accused in the case.
