Kolkata: A CBI team, comprising eight officers, questioned Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee’s sister-in-law, Menka Gambhir, at her residence for over three hours on Monday in connection with its probe into the alleged coal-mining scam in Bengal. A few minutes before CBI team knocked at Gambhir’s Panchasayar home near EM Bypass, Abhishek’s wife Rujira Banerjee Naroola told the agency its officers could visit her at her Harish Mukherjee Road house between 11 am and 3 pm on Tuesday. She, however, said she “was unaware” why she was questioned and did not know the “subject matter” of the probe.
On Sunday, CBI had served Rujira and her sister, Gambhir, summons to question them in the illegal coal-mining case probe. The agency registered an FIR last November, naming six people, including prime suspect Anup Maji and five officials of a nationalised mining company, while several others of a coal company, CISF, Railways and other departments were under suspicion.
Raids were conducted at the home of Trinamool youth leader Vinay Mishra over the last few months. Both Mishra and Maji are said to be absconding. Rujira wrote to CBI additional police superintendent Umesh Kumar (the investigation officer) on Monday morning, acknowledging the summons that arrived when she was not at home on Sunday, and requesting him to inform her about its schedule.
A six-member team, led by Kumar, is likely to go to question Rujira on Tuesday, officials said. The team, including two women members, may be accompanied by a legal adviser, who is being flown in from Delhi. A Kolkata-based lawyer will also be present during the questioning to assist Rujira, “should she have any legal queries”. There was, however, no official word from the agency.
Kumar and seven CBI officers, including two women, reached Gambhir’s residence on Monday. They unofficially said they wanted to question Gambhir on whether she was aware of a businessman, now based in the UAE. The businessman, the agency suspects, has received a portion of the money from the illegal coal-mining scam. The agency also suspects that the businessman, who was under its radar in earlier probes, had helped the masterminds of the coal mining scam to stash money overseas through a web of companies. The complex chain, the CBI believes, extends beyond the UAE to several counties in south-east Asia, Germany and the UK.
The CBI visit comes amid a no-holds-barred fight between the Trinamool and the BJP ahead of the state assembly polls and follows last week’s summons from a city court to Union home minister Amit Shah in a 2018 criminal defamation case lodged by Abhishek. Mamata later said, “Please do not try to intimidate us with your threats and fear of jail”. A Trinamool source, reacting to the BJP’s “intimidatory tactics”, said such a move was “predictable”. “All of BJP’s allies have left them. So, their only loyal allies are the CBI and the ED. We will fight it out. We are not scared. We believe people will give a fitting reply at the elections.” The case refers to one that the CBI registered on November 27, 2020, regarding illegal coal-mining in Bengal, based on “source information”.
