Kolkata, July 17 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday submitted a second supplementary chargesheet in the illegal land grabbing case in West Bengal giving details on the accused land mafia in the case, Biswajit Poddar alias Sona Pappu, who gained financially in the alleged scam.
Two other principal accused persons in the case are former Deputy Commissioner of Kolkata Police, Santanu Sinha Biswas and real estate promoter, Joy Kamdar whose involvement details in the matter was given in the first supplementary chargesheet of the ED filed at a special court of the Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) in Kolkata earlier this month.
Sources aware of the development said that in the 100-page second supplementary chargesheet filed at the same special PMLA court on Friday, the involvement details of Sona Pappu had been given.
It is learnt that in the second supplementary chargesheet, where statements of 200 witnesses in the matter have been recorded, Sona Pappu had been accused of illegally earning an amount of around Rs 37.77 crore through illegal land grabbing.
The ED had claimed that Sona Pappu used to grab land by force and in this operation his targets were mainly the helpless senior citizens.
In many cases, ED had claimed in the chargesheet, that the victims’ land was seized by threatening them and in this racket Sinha Biswas and Kamdar were Sona Pappu’s accomplishes.
Apart from that, ED had claimed that because of protection that Pappu enjoyed from Sinha Biswas, who incidentally was a close confidant of the former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Baerjee, Pappu was beyond the reach of the police during the previous Trinamool Congress government.
Meanwhile, the ED had started a parallel investigation against Sinha Biswas on his earnings made by influencing the transfer and posting of police officers in ranks junior to him.
The new line of investigation is only the basis of specific complaints that the former Kolkata Police Deputy Commissioner influenced transfers and postings in the ranks of Sub-Inspectors, Inspectors, and even Assistant Commissioner-level officers and earned hefty commission by arranging the reportedly “lucrative” posting for them.
–IANS
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