Kolkata, May 8 (). The Enforcement Directorate (ED), in its supplementary charge sheet filed in Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court last week, has detailed the lottery aspect in the alleged multi-crore cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal.
Sources said the ED has detailed how Trinamool Congress strongman Anubrata Mondal, in connivance with a specialized lottery agency based out of Birbhum district, siphoned off lottery tickets won by common people at throwaway prices and used them to run scams. Done to convert the unaccounted money into accounts.
Sources said that in the charge sheet, the central agency has named a corporator of Bolpur Municipality in Birbhum district, who acted as the coordinator in the entire process. The lottery angle in the entire scam first came to the fore in November last year during a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe into the alleged cattle-smuggling scam.
While probing the bank accounts of Anubrata Mandal and his daughter Sukanya Mandal, the CBI noticed several credit transactions shown as lottery prize money. Such credit transactions were so frequent that the central agency was convinced that two individuals winning lottery tickets in this manner could not be coincidental.
The CBI then began probing the lottery angle in the scam and during its investigation, it interrogated some persons who confessed to selling lottery tickets won by them to Mandal’s associates at a price much less than the winning amount. Now the same issue has also come up in the ED’s charge sheet.
Sources said the ED has detected several cash deposits at frequent intervals of a little less than Rs 50,000 in different bank accounts of Sukanya Mandal, which were done to avoid the use of PAN while making such deposits . As per banking norms, quoting of PAN of the depositor is mandatorily required for cash deposits of Rs 50,000 and above.
KC/SGK
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