KOLKATA: Amid revelations of involvement of top Tollywood actors and political honchos from north and south Bengal in the Rs 15,000-crore Rose Valley scam, two powerful north Bengal politicians of rival
parties Trinamool Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) were spooked by phone calls from callers claiming to be officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the scam and has arrested two top Trinamool MPs so far for their alleged connection with it.
Tourism minister in Mamata Banerjee’s second term cabinet, Goutam Deb and present Siliguri mayor and former Municipal Affairs and Urban Development (MA&UD) minister during Left Front regime, Ashok Bhattacharya received calls from voices claiming to call from CBI on December 30, the day when first arrest of actor-turned-Trinamool lawmaker Tapas Pal was made by the CBI. The party’s Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyay was arrested a few days later. Both are being interrogated by the CBI at Bhubaneswar. The revelations of the spook calls were
recently made by the politicos.
Sources revealed that the caller to Goutam Deb introduced himself as a CBI officer waiting to meet Goutam Deb along with a ‘huge contingent of security forces’ and hung up. The caller to the former CPM minister Ashok Bhattacharya was more courteous. According to sources, the caller after introducing himself as a CBI officer, asked about the health condition of Ashok Bhattacharya. Fearing the call was from an extortionist, Ashok Bhattacharya claimed he hung up.
While Goutam Deb has ordered an inquiry into the call, Ashok Bhattacharya has dismissed the call as fake. Nevertheless, with the political situation tensed in the state over the arrests in
the scam, both the top north Bengal politicians are in a fix over who made the calls.
Meanwhile, sources revealed that the CBI investigators refuted claims of genuine CBI officials randomly calling up politicos and scaring them. “The CBI follows a definite procedure in the investigation process. First, notices are served and then the accused are summoned for interrogation,” a source said.