Bengal: Police Recover Cash-Filled Bags Buried In Farmland Owned By Arrested Trinamool Leader

(MENAFN- IANS) Kolkata, May 27 (IANS) The police recovered four trolley bags and one sack full of cash by digging up the soil of farmland owned by the chairman of Trinamool Congress-controlled Baduria Municipality in North 24 Parganas district, Dipankar Bhattacharya, who was arrested on corruption charges from a hotel.

When he was arrested from the hotel on Monday night, the police recovered cash worth Rs 80 lakh from his possession.

Bhattacharya was produced before a district court on Tuesday, which remanded him to police custody.

Sources from the state police, aware of the development, said that during interrogation, Bhattacharya confessed that more cash had been hidden under the soil of his farmland.

On Wednesday afternoon, the police took Bhattacharya to the farmland and, after digging up the land, the cops recovered four trolley bags and one sack, all filled with cash.

At the time the report was filed, the police were still counting the cash recovered.

Police suspect the fresh recovery could be worth a couple of crores.

According to police, allegations of corruption had been levelled against Bhattacharya for a long time.

Earlier, the police had recovered about 4,000 government tarpaulins from a local Trinamool Congress office in Baduria and a garden house owned by Bhattacharya.

Two separate complaints were filed against the chairman of the Baduria municipality at the police station, one by the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the other by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Acting on these complaints, Dipankar was arrested by the police on Monday night, and Rs 80 lakh in cash was recovered from his possession.

Now, questions have been raised about how Bhattacharya could possess such huge amounts of cash.

There are currently two corruption charges against him: the first is the receipt of commissions for allotments under“Banglar Bari”, the state's own housing scheme introduced during the previous Trinamool Congress regime, and the second is the extortion of local people, especially traders in Baduria.

BJP legislator Sajal Ghosh claimed that the recovery of cash from beneath the soil of the farmland owned by Bhattacharya proved how deep-rooted and widespread corruption was during the previous Trinamool Congress regime in West Bengal.

“If such a huge amount can be recovered from the possession of the chairman of a district-level municipality, it is well imaginable what kind of money was earned by the former ministers and the top leaders of the previous ruling party,” said Ghosh.

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