The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested West Bengal Minister Jyoti Priya Mallick in a case relating to irregularities in the State’s public distribution system. Mr. Mallick was arrested in the early hours of the day after the central investigation agency held raids on eight of his properties for nearly 20 hours.
“I am a victim of a conspiracy,” Mr. Mallick told journalists as he was being taken by the ED from his residence at Salt Lake in North 24 Parganas to an ED office in Kolkata in the early hours of Friday. Later, on Friday morning, when the Minister was taken for a medical check up, he blamed the BJP and Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari for his arrest.
Minister falls in court
Mr. Mallick was produced before a court which remanded him to ED custody till November 6. After the arguments in the court and when the Judge pronounced its order the Minister fell ill in the courtroom. He was taken to a private health facility in the city. The court said that the Minister ED custody of ten days will be counted after he is released from the hospital. The counsel of the ED in the court raised question on the increase in properties of Mr. Mallick and that he had set up three fake firms through which funds were siphoned out.
Mr. Mallick, who was in charge of the State’s Food and Supplies Department from (2011-2021), is the second sitting Minister to be arrested by the ED. In July 2022, ED had arrested former State’s Education Minister Partha Chatterjee in the school job recruitment scam. Several MLAs of the ruling party as well as officials of the Stater Education Department are behind bars for their involvement in the recruitment scam
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had on Thursday decried ED raids on the properties of Mr. Mallick. “Jyoti Priya Mallick is unwell. I will lodge an FIR against the ED and the BJP if anything happens to him during the raids,” the Trinamool Congress chairperson had said.
The case in which the Minister has been arrested dates back to 2020-21 when FIRs relating to irregularities in the public distribution system were registered at a few in the police stations of the State.
After investigation by State police the ED took up the matter. Last week, the ED had arrested businessman Bakibur Rehman in connection with the same case. The ED has found properties valuing about ₹100 crore in the name of Bakibur Rahman, who is said to be very close to the Minister.
Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari while referring to arrest of two Ministers and two MLAs of Trinamool Congress, quipped that the next assembly session will be inside a correctional home.
The BJP MLA alleged the Chief Minister did not appoint Jyoti Priya Mallick as the Minister in Charge of the Food & Supplies Department in 2021 as she wanted to save him from the glare of central investigation agencies, “after engaging in mountainous corruption for a decade as the Food & Supplies Minister from 2011 to 2021”.
“However, she wanted him to keep raising funds illegally and hand over the share of the proceeds to intended persons. So as a way out she appointed him as the Chairman of the West Bengal Essential Commodities Supply Corporation (WBECSC), the company which is entrusted with the procurement & distribution of paddy & other food grains in WB,” Mr. Adhikari said on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
