KOLKATA: One more former minister in the erstwhile Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal was arrested on Tuesday night for allegedly storing tarpaulins and other relief material at his residence in the Nadia district.
According to police, the former state minister for correctional administration, Ujjwal Biswas, was arrested on charges of illegally storing tarpaulins, dhotis, sarees, clothes, and other relief items in his house in Krishnanagar.
The family members of the former Krishnanagar Dakshmin MLA, rejected the charges.
"Being a minister as well as a MLA he had been allotted the relief items, which were stored at his house. Recently, he had informed the district administration to take these undistributed goods back from his house," they said.
The family alleged that the former minister was heckled by BJP workers when the local BDO office staff reached his house to collect the items.
According to the family, the mob entered the former minister’s house and threw eggs at him, demanding his arrest.
Police from the nearby Kotowali police station rushed to the spot, rescued him and then took him away. Following the demand of the agitators, police registered his arrest later in the night.
Police have also detained one of Biswas’s accomplices for interrogation.
The police action against Biswas came hours after TMC leader leader Sabyasachi Dutta was arrested early on Tuesday from West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district on charges of extortion and criminal intimidation.
Earlier in the day, an FIR was lodged against former Indranil Sen and his wife Madhuchanda Sen for their alleged involvement in a financial racket centred on Durga Puja festivals in Kolkata.
On May 11, former minister Sujit Bose was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged municipal recruitment scam in the state.