Kolkata: Around 20 Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials and forensic experts conducted an eight-hour search on Friday at suspended Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Sheikh Shahjahan’s home and a market he owns at Sandeshkhali in Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, officials said.
The development came three days after CBI took custody of the TMC strongman who, along with his associates, is accused of land grab, extortion and sexual crimes against local women.
“Two local residents were detained for questioning in connection with the January 5 attack on Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials who raided Shahjahan’s home,” a CBI official said on condition of anonymity.
CBI officials said they traced all the numbers to which calls were made from two numbers registered in Shahjahan’s name but his mobile handsets could not be traced. The call history revealed that on January 5, Sukumar Mahata, the TMC legislator from Sandeshkhali, called up Shahjahan on one of his numbers, said an officer. Mahata said he called up Shahjahan, a panchayat zilla parishad member, on hearing the news of the assault on ED officials.
“I came to know of the assault after everything was over. I got the news from a local TMC leader. I called up Shahjahan to tell him that there should not be any trouble and nobody should get hurt under any circumstance,” Mahata told the media on Friday.
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Accused by local residents of extortion, land grabbing and sexually exploiting village women over several years, Shahjahan was arrested by local police on February 28 – after he stayed in hiding for 55 days – in connection with the attack on ED officials who raided his home because he is a suspect in the multi-crore public distribution system (PDS) case.
Former food minister Jyotipriya Mallick was arrested by ED on October 27 last year in this case. The ED has alleged that subsidised good grains meant for ration shops were allegedly syphoned to the open market to be sold at a premium.
Shahjahan, who was suspended from the TMC for six days after his arrest following a violent rebellion by villagers, was handed over to CBI on Wednesday under orders of the Calcutta high court and in the midst of a raging political row.
The island village of Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district has been in the eye of the storm since January 5, when ED officers arrived to search the home of Shahjahan, a close aide of former minister Jyoti Priya Mallick, who was arrested in October last year in connection with an alleged ration distribution scam.
The ED team came under attack from an angry mob, leaving three officers injured. But, on February 7, other violent protests began erupting in Sandeshkhali and other nearby villages, with groups of residents led mostly by local women, alleging sexual harassment at the hands of local TMC leaders including Shahjahan, his brother Sirajuddin, and other associates Shibaprasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar. Other villages have claimed that Shahjahan and his associates also indulged in landgrab.
The state has repeatedly accused the Opposition of politicising the event. But the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party wants to use Sandeshkhali as a referendum on the TMC government’s grip on law and order in the state. A number of national panels — including the National Commission of Women, the National Commission of Scheduled Castes and the National Commission of Scheduled Tribes — have visited the area and later said that they documented serious allegations against Sheikh and his associates.
Shahjahan, a former TMC zila parishad leader, was arrested by the state police on the orders of the high court on February 29. CID later took over the investigation.
Currently in the custody of the CBI and kept at the agency’s Nizam Palace in south Kolkata, Shahjahan said he was innocent when he was taken to a hospital in Kolkata on Friday for a routine medical check-up as prescribed by rules.
“These (the charges) are all lies. It will be proved. Allah is there. The judgment will be delivered someday,” Shahjahan told reporters, pointing a finger at the sky when he was being taken back to the CBI office. On Friday, forensic experts recorded three-dimensional images of all the buildings they visited and collected various samples for examination.
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