NEW DELHI: Skeletons have started to tumble out of the closet as the CBI inquiry progressed into the `15,000-crore Rose Valley scam on Wednesday. Sources close to the CBI revealed that a popular Bengali actor, yet to be identified, had allegedly enabled transactions worth `350 crore from a Singapore-based firm through hawala channels for Rose Valley.
She allegedly went with prime accused and Rose Valley owner Gautam Kundu on multiple foreign trips and enabled him to buy and sell several Bengali films. The CBI will soon summon the actor, according to the sources.
“Movements of the actor were closely monitored for the past three years. All evidence proving her involvement in the scam were carefully knit together to make the case fool-proof, considering the mass following and political clout of the actor,” a source said.
Actor-turned-Trinamool-lawmaker Tapas Pal and the party’s Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyay have already been arrested by the investigative agency. Meanwhile, responding to the call of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to protest the arrest of the Trinamool MPs, party cadres on Wednesday blocked inter-state traffic at the borders with Jharkhand, Odisha and Assam. They also disrupted Kolkata suburban railway traffic by staging a rail blockade near the busy Sealdah junction, burnt Prime Minister Narendra Modi in effigy and gheraoed the residence of BJP MP Babul Surpiyo, demanding his arrest. The Oppostion BJP and CPM also staged protests in Kolkata.
Representatives of the Trinamool, BJP and the CPM separately met Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi. While the Trinamool demanded the arrest of Supriyo and CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty, the BJP complained about the Trinamool attacks on BJP headquarters in Kolkata on Tuesday.
While the state Congress leadership first welcomed the arrest of Sudip, it towed the central line after party spokesperson Manish Tewari termed the arrests as “politically vindictive”.
“We are questioning the timing of the arrests. For more than a year the CBI was silent, but all of a sudden it has become active when the Opposition is getting united on the issue of demonetisation. This is an attempt to break the unity of the opposition on the issue of demonetisation,” Congress general secretary C P Joshi told reporters in New Delhi.
And the deployment of paramilitary forces at the BJP headquarters did not go down well with Mamata, who saw it as a violation of the federal structure. “I don’t trust police. I asked for Central forces to protect the 150 BJP workers trapped in the headquarters from thousands of TMC cadres,” state BJP chief Dileep Ghosh said.