ED summons TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee in connection with coal scam case

|HT|

The Enforcement Directorate or ED has summoned Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee to appear at the agency's Kolkata office on September 2 in connection with the ongoing alleged coal scam case.

Abhishek, who is also the nephew of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, had appeared before the central agency in March at its office in New Delhi in connection with the case.

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 Limited mines in the state's Kunustoria and Kajora areas in and around Asansol.

The ED claimed that the parliamentarian was a beneficiary of funds obtained from this illegal trade. It has arrested two people in this case till now.

Earlier this month, the ED had summoned eight IPS officers posted in West Bengal to New Delhi for questioning in the coal smuggling case.

The CBI had in November 2020 registered a case and alleged that illegally mined coal, worth several thousand crores of rupees, has been sold in the black market over several years by a racket operating in the western parts of West Bengal where the Eastern Coalfields Limited runs several mines.

Trinamool Congress youth leader Vinay Mishra is a prime accused in the case. Local coal operator Anup Majhi is also a prime suspect in the case. He is allegedly a close associate of Abhishek Banerjee.

It was the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which had started the probe into the coal smuggling case, while the ED initiated a parallel investigation.

On February 21, 2021, a CBI team visited Abhishek's house and summoned his wife Rujira and his sister-in-law Menaka Gambhir over an alleged connection in the case.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)