The West Bengal criminal investigation department (CID) on Wednesday alleged that its teams were stopped in New Delhi and Guwahati from conducting investigation in a case pertaining to seizure of cash from three Jharkhand Congress legislators, a charge denied by both Assam and Delhi police forces.
A CID team visited Moti Bagh in Delhi to raid the house of Siddharth Majumder, who is allegedly connected to the case, while another visited the Guwahati airport to gather CCTV footage of the Jharkhand MLAs reaching the city on July 29 and leaving the airport next day, senior CID officials in Kolkata said.
The West Bengal Police on July 31 arrested Jamtara legislator Irfan Ansari, Khijri MLA Rajesh Kachhap and Kolebira MLA Naman Bixal Kongari with ₹49 lakh in cash stacked in the car they were travelling in.
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In Delhi, a four-member CID team on Wednesday morning landed with a search warrant issued by a judicial magistrate in Bengal’s Howrah district — where the MLAs were arrested — and took some police officers and a woman constable from Chanakyapuri police station for a raid at Majumder’s house in Moti Bagh area. “Majumder, a businessman, had apparently fixed appointments between the three Jharkhand MLAs and some important people in Assam. We wanted to question him in that regard and also about the money trail,” said a senior CID official, asking not to be named.
A member of the CID team said that the Delhi Police cited technical grounds while stopping them from searching Majumder’s residence. “Officers from the local police station initially cooperated and accompanied us to the suspect’s residence but after a while they said we have to leave because the investigating officer (IO) of the case, in whose name the warrant is issued, was not present,” said Arijit Bhattacharya, additional officer-in-charge, CID, who was leading the team.
“We explained that the investigating officer had issued an authorisation letter for the team to conduct the search…Still, we were not allowed to search the premises,” he added.
The West Bengal CID tweeted: “In course of investigation of Panchla PS Case No 276/22 a team of CID which had gone to Delhi to execute search warrant issued by Ld Court has been stopped from doing their lawful duty on the direction of @dcp_southwest. Personal intervention of @CPDelhi is requested.@DelhiPolice.”
“The case involves seizure of huge cash from 3 MLAs of Jharkhand. Detaining & preventing the CID WB team to conduct lawful search will lead to disappearance of crucial evidence by the suspects responsibility of which will lie on the DP officers who prevented the search. @CPDelhi,” said a second tweet.
Delhi Police deputy commissioner of police (south-west) Manoj C said that they assisted the team initially but communicated to the Bengal police later about finding legal discrepancies. “A team of West Bengal (WB) Police had arrived today for execution of a search warrant in the area of South West district. Initially, Delhi Police provided all necessary assistance to WB Police for the execution of the search warrant. However, legal discrepancies were noticed during execution of the same. Accordingly, legal opinion was sought which revealed that the warrant is not executable. Hence, the same was conveyed to WB Police,” he said.
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Referring to the alleged detention of the CID team at Guwahati airport, a senior official in Kolkata said: “We had information that after reaching the airport on July 29, the Jharkhand MLAs left in Assam government vehicles and returned to the airport in the same vehicles the next day. The CID team members were detained when they tried to collect the CCTV footage.”
Refuting the allegation, an Assam police officer said the CID team was allowed to do its work. “As far as I am aware, their probe was related to some information required from the airport area, which is under the CISF jurisdiction and not the Assam Police. Since we were informed about the team’s visit, one of our officers was present at the airport and facilitated the movement of the West Bengal team,” said a senior Assam Police officer on condition of anonymity. “There is no question of interfering in their probe or stopping them from doing their work.”
