KOLKATA: TMC shot off a letter to the CEC alleging that CBI’s actions were intended to smear the party’s reputation amid the elections.
A day after a CBI and NSG search in Sandeshkhali unearthed a cache of foreign-made arms, ammunition and unidentified explosives from the house of a close relative of a Sheikh Shahjahan aide, the Trinamool Congress, led by supremo Mamata Banerjee, blamed the BJP for the operation “to get advantage in the Lok Sabha elections”. The BJP pointed to the series of bomb blasts in West Bengal and demanded the arrest of Mamata Banerjee and the banning of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) as “an extremist organisation like the SIMI and the PFI”.
Meanwhile, agency sources said that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) would be joining the probe after an FIR is filed. The CBI, which was probing the attack on ED officials by Sheikh Shahjahan’s associates on January 5, is also enlarging its ambit to investigate how arms and ammunition reached Sandeshkhali.
Mamata Banerjee wrote on X: “After the second phase of the LS election, the BJP has spiralled into a state of panic. They’re using every last ounce of their money and muscle power to sabotage the polls.”
The Trinamool Congress shot off a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner alleging that the CBI’s actions were intended to smear the party’s reputation amid the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
In a letter dated April 26, but made public on Saturday, the party wrote: “Today, i.e. 26.04.2024, is the day earmarked as the polling day for Phase II of the ensuing Lok Sabha Elections, 2024. More specifically in West Bengal, the electorate was scheduled to vote in three Parliamentary Constituencies, which are, Darjeeling, Raiganj and Balurghat. While elections were going on, the CBI deliberately carried out an unscrupulous raid at an empty location in Sandeshkhali. Media reports suggest that the CBI called in additional forces including the bomb squad of the National Security Guard (NSG). It has also been reported that arms and ammunition have been recovered from a house during such a raid.”
“In this regard, it is stated that though law and order is a domain falling completely within the ambit of the State Government, the CBI did not issue an actionable notice to the State Government and/or the police authorities before carrying out such a raid. Further, the State Police has a fully functional bomb disposal squad which could have assisted the entire operation, if the CBI indeed felt that a bomb squad was required during such a raid.
However, no such assistance was sought by the CBI.
“It is further astonishing to notice that media personnel were already present during such the raid even before the State administration arrived at the spot. At such a point in time, it was already nationwide news that weapons had been recovered during the raid. There is no way of knowing with certainty, as to whether these weapons were indeed recovered during the search and seizure procedure or whether they were surreptitiously planted by the CBI/NSG,” the statement added.
The Trinamool Congress also stated that the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have “regularly targeted the AITC” during its campaign trail vis-à-vis the alleged crimes committed in Sandeshkhali.
“The CBI is controlled by the BJP through the Central Government… It is reiterated that in the absence of any representative of the State Government, the purported recovery of arms and ammunition is possibly a ploy employed by the BJP in conspiracy with the CBI and the NSG to plant such weapons at the site,” the party said in the letter.
“It would not be out of place to revisit that the Hon’ble Supreme Court has time and again held that free and fair elections form an important concomitant of democracy. In the present situation, the BJP has compromised the sanctity of the ensuing elections by spreading a sense of terror amongst the electorate, thereby attempting to gain an undue advantage in the ensuing elections,” the Trinamool Congress wrote in its letter to the Election Commission.
The BJP’s Leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, said: “There is a clear pattern in the series of explosions that have rocked the State in recent times like Khagragarh, Amdanga, Egra Khanikul, Bhupatinagar under Mamata Banerjee’s watch. Mamata Banerjee is solely responsible. She must be arrested and the Trinamool Congress must be banned just like the SIMI and the PFI.”
BJP MP Dilip Ghosh expressed concern about the arms haul and sought a probe into the Trinamool leaders’ links to international arms syndicates. “Sheikh Shahjahan was using the porous India-Bangladesh border near Sandeshkhali to bring in Rohingyas. They were sheltered in camps run by him and then transported to various parts of India after the Mamata government gave them identity documents. So, arms and ammunition could have been brought into the State in the same way. This State has fallen to terrorists and goons.”
Amit Malviya, the BJP’s IT cell head and co-incharge of West Bengal, said: “The CBI, in its press release, said that among other things, they have recovered a Colt official Police Revolver, from an associate of Sheikh Shahjahan, who Mamata Banerjee defended on the floor of West Bengal Assembly. It raises several serious questions:
“How did a Police revolver find its way to criminals like Sheikh Shahjahan?
“Was it stolen from the state armoury? Was it ever reported? What all arms are missing from the state armoury? Custodial interrogation of Bengal DGP can shed light on it.
“Or worse, is the West Bengal Police, under Mamata Banerjee as Home Minister, now part of a thriving terror syndicate, which deals in illegal foreign weapons being smuggled into the country?”
“It is now clear that Sheikh Shahjahan was not just a rapist but also a terrorist. But the final accountability rests with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is also responsible for the Police Department in Bengal. She must speak up,” Malviya told The Sunday Guardian.