Jharkhand MLA arrest: West Bengal CID officers detained in Delhi and Assam during probe

Debjit Mukherjee: West Bengal CID officers on Wednesday were detained in both Delhi and Assam during the probe in the cash seizure case involving three arrested Jharkhand Congress MLAs.

While the CID officers went to raid at a property belonging to a man closely associated to one of the three Jharkhand MLAs, the Delhi police detained the CBI sleuths including an inspector, ASI and two SIs in South Campus Police station.

According to CID officer Arijit Bhattacharya, despite having a valid search warrant, the four CID officials were detained by Delhi police.

According to West Bengal CID sources, one ADG and two IG rank officers are being sent to the national capital to solve the issue.

Taking to Twitter CID said, “The case involves seizure of huge cash from 3 MLAs of Jharkhand. Detaining & preventing the CID WB team to conduct lawful search will lead to disappearance of crucial evidence by the suspects responsibility of which will lie on the DP officers who prevented the search. @CPDelhi.”

Same incident happened in Assam, while the CID sleuths were asking for the video footage of the Assam airport as the three arrested Congress MLAs had visited Guwahati to meet Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the CID officers were detained by police.

According to CID officers, three Jharkhand Congress MLAs must have taken a car from the airport for which they were asking for video footage, but they were detained.

Earlier this day, the CID officers arrested one Mahendra Agarwal from whose office 49 lakh rupees were sent to the Congress MLAs. On Tuesday, the CID sleuths recovered 3,31,700 rupees from his office and on Wednesday morning, 250 silver coins were found.

While being interrogated, Agarwal fell ill and was taken to SSKM hospital for treatment after which he was taken to CID headquarters at Bhawani Bhawan.

On the other hand, CBI raided six locations of Birbhum district in connection with its investigation into an alleged cattle smuggling scam.

Houses of Kerim Khan and his close associate Ziaul Haque were raided by the central agencies and both of them are said to be the close aides of TMC Birbhum district president Anubrata Mandal.