Bengal ration distribution case: ED likely to submit charge sheet next week

Kolkata, Dec 10: Enforcement Directorate (ED) is likely to submit its charge sheet in the ration distribution case in West Bengal next week at a PMLA special court in Kolkata.

Sources aware of the development said arrested Minister Jyotipriya Mallick and his close associate Bakibur Rahman will be named as the principal masterminds in the charge sheet.

Both Mallick, the current state forest minister and the former food & supplies minister, and Rahman, a Kolkata- based businessman, were arrested by the ED in October.

Though Rahman is in judicial custody now at the Presidency Central Correctional Home in South Kolkata, the minister is admitted to the state-run S.S.K.M. Medical College & Hospital. However, in the hospital too, he is under CCTV surveillance whose link is there with the ED sleuths.

Sources said that in the charge sheet the central agency sleuths might also provide details of the multiple shell corporate entities, whose names surfaced during the course of investigation and the details of the banking transactions from their accounts.

ED sleuths have already got specific clues that these shell corporate entities were actually run by the arrested minister from behind the curtains by making his family relations, including his wife and daughter and his close associates, as the directors there.

Some statements made by those interrogated by the central agency sleuths might also be incorporated in the charge sheet. The documents also might include details of how Rahman used to illegally procure paddy from the farmers at rates below the minimum support price by opening fake farmers’ cooperatives.