From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the Enforcement Directorate (ED) visit to Kolkata to conduct a probe into the money laundering in a coal scam in West Bengal in which the agency has issued summons to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamul Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee(34) and his wife Rujira Banerjee.
On the ED counsel referring to how the CBI officials were “gheraoed” in Kolkata earlier in May last and Abhishek, who is politically influential, can also do so, a Bench of Justices Uday Umesh Lalit directed the Kolkata Police to extent all cooperations to the ED, the moment the agency makes a requisition 72 hours in advance. Two other judges on the bench were Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia.
The Bench was hearing an appeal by Abhishek Banerjee and his wife Rujira against a Delhi High Court order dismissing their petition challenging summons issued to them in the money laundering probe.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioners, said they are not preventing investigation in the matter and the ED can go to Kolkata and conduct the probe.
“Supposing in case we say whatever documents, whatever records you need, every page shall be made available and you can come down to Kolkata,” the bench, also comprising Justices S R Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia, told Additional Solicitor General (ASG) S V Raju who was representing the ED.
In a high voltage drama in Kolkata on May 17 last year, the TMC supporters demonstrated all over the city, hurled stones at the security personnel outside CBI office at Nizam Palace and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee offered to court arrest in protest of the CBI detention of her two ministers in the Narada case.
During the hearing, Sibal said ED has a regional office in Kolkata and so it can interrogate Abhishek and wife there instead of summoning them to Delhi.
“I (petitioner) am not preventing investigation. I am saying please come and investigate me. The issue is not of investigation, the issue is where. I am saying please come and investigate me. I will answer all your questions, you come to Kolkata. They say no, we will not come, you come to Delhi. That’s the question,” Sibal said.
The bench told the ASG that it would say that the state of West Bengal shall, upon requisition by ED, give them a police force.
When Raju said that ED has territorial jurisdiction and the case has been registered in Delhi, the bench said, “If you have territorial jurisdiction all over the country, you can as well go and make the investigation in Kolkata”.
Raju wanted the Bench to keep the matter on Friday. “We are not passing any order but whatever is the status today, shall continue,”the bench said while posting the matter for May 17.
The ED lodged a case under the provisions of the PMLA based on a November 2020 FIR registered by the CBI that alleged a multi-crore coal pilferage scam related to Eastern Coalfields Ltd mines in the state’s Kunustoria and Kajora areas in and around Asansol.
Local coal operative Anup Majhi alias Lala is alleged to be the prime suspect in the case.
