Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in its supplementary charge sheet filed at the Rouse Avenue Court in Delhi last week has detailed the lottery angle in the alleged multi-crore cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal.
Sources said that ED has detailed how Trinamool Congress strongman Anubrata Mondal, in association with a particular lottery agency based out of Birbhum district, used to grab lottery tickets won by common people at throwaway prices and used the same to convert unaccounted money coming from scam proceeds into accounted ones.
In the charge sheet, sources said, the central agency has named a councillor of Bolpur Municipality in Birbhum district who played the role of coordinator in the entire process.
The lottery angle in the entire scam first surfaced in November last year during the probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel investigation into the alleged cattle-smuggling scam.
While checking the bank accounts of Anubrata Mondal and his daughter Sukanya Mondal, the CBI noticed multiple credit transactions shown as lottery prize money amounts. The credit transactions of such nature were so frequent that it made the central agency believe that such frequent winning of lottery tickets by two individuals could not be a matter of coincidence.
The CBI then started probing the lottery angle in the scam and in the course of its investigation, it interrogated a couple of persons who admitted selling lottery tickets won by them to Mondal’s associates at prices much lesser than the winning amount.
Now, the same issue has come up in the ED charge sheet.
Sources said that ED has traced multiple cash deposits at frequent intervals in amounts slightly less than Rs 50,000 in the different bank accounts held by Sukanya Mondal, which was done in order to avoid the use of PAN while making such deposits. As per banking norms, any cash deposit worth Rs 50,000 and above mandatorily requires the mention of PAN of the depositor.
(IANS)
