Bengal TMC district leader, his brother arrested by ED in PDS scam
Anisur Rehman, president of the TMC’s Deganga block unit, and his brother Alif Noor were arrested after night-long interrogation at the ED office in Salt Lake on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata, officials said
Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested a Trinamool Congress (TMC) community block unit president from North 24 Parganas district and his brother in connection with the alleged Rs.2,000 crore public distribution system (PDS) scam, officials of the federal agency said.
Anisur Rehman, president of the TMC’s Deganga block unit, and his brother Alif Noor were arrested after night-long interrogation at the ED office in Salt Lake on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata, officials said.
“Anirsur and Alif are relatives of Abdul Barik Biswas, the rice mill owner whose home and office were raided on July 30. It is suspected that Anisur and Alif forged documents to show themselves as farmers supplying rice to the government,” an ED official said on condition of anonymity.
ED officials who searched the properties of Biswas claimed that he was a close associate of former food minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who was arrested on October 27 last year.
On December 12, ED filed its first charge sheet in this case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), naming Mallick, rice mill owner and hotelier Bakibur Rahaman, and 10 shell companies.
Rahaman, who was arrested on October 14, was a key player in the siphoning operation in which his warehouses were used, ED said in the charge sheet.
ED told a Kolkata court in January this year that the scam involves around Rs.20,000 crore.
The scam, in which subsidized food grains meant for the PDS system were siphoned to the open market for sale, took place when Mallick was West Bengal’s food minister between 2011—when TMC came to power for the first time—and 2021.
ED officials claimed on Friday that money from the illegal business is suspected to have been siphoned abroad.