Kolkata: The standoff between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party continues, as TMC workers protest outside Alipore court over West Bengal Minister Madan Mitra's arrest in the multi-crore Saradha chit-fund scam on Saturday.
Earlier on Saturday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP leadership to arrest her.
She said, "Kalidas axed the branch of the tree he was sitting on. Those in power in Delhi are doing the same. Governments come and go, democracy remains forever. Those in power in Delhi must remember this."
She raked up the issue of alleged link between the Sahara group and top BJP leadership.
This is for the first time that a Cabinet Minister in the Mamata government has been arrested by the CBI in the scam. So far, the arrested persons included TMC members of Parliament Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose.
The CBI arrested Mitra after interrogating him for nearly five hours over the post he was holding in Saradha Group of Companies. The minister appeared before the CBI at the agency's office at the Salt Lake CGO complex on Friday morning in connection with the case. He has been arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating, misappropriation and for deriving undue financial benefits from the Saradha Group.
He was summoned by the CBI in November 2014 but he checked into a government hospital instead barely hours before his scheduled appearance before the investigating agency, presumably to evade the grilling session. The CBI also arrested Naresh Balodia, legal advisor to Sudipto Sen and Saradha Group on charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and diversion of funds in the same case. Balodia had drafted the letter which Sudipto Sen had sent to the investigative agency, a CBI spokesman said.
Kunal Ghosh has also accused Mitra of being involved in the scam. Mitra won the Bishnupur Assembly seat of South 24 Parganas district in the 2009 bypolls. He represented the constituency perched in the southern fringes of Kolkata till 2011.
The Saradha Group, incidentally, started its operations from Bishnupur and, during Mitra's time, was in full flourish. Mitra lectured at the group's investors' meet and ushered heaps of praises on the "good work the company was doing".
He was, allegedly, also the president of the group's employees' association. His pictures with the discredited chairman of the Group, Sudipta Sen, was once seen proudly hung at the Saradha offices before they were quickly removed after the company collapsed in April, 2013.
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