Kolkata, Dec 14 (FN Agency) CBI’s anti-corruption branch sleuths on |Thursday raided at least 12 locations, including Kolkata and the industrial towns of Durgapur and Asansol, in relation to the alleged coal smuggling from the state-owned ECL mines in West Bengal, official sources confirmed. In Kolkata, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths raided three flats in Bhawanipur, where former ECL official Shyamal Singha resides, the sources said. Besides, the federal agency’s anti-corruption wing began search operations in several places of Paschim Bardhaman district, including Asansol and Durgapur towns.
The raids were done in the offices and residences of the alleged beneficiaries of the scandal, in which some of the accused persons have already been arrested, while some inluential people in the state have been grilled. The CBI raids took place after the investigating officials got some clues about more beneficiaries in the coal scam, in which a businessman and his agent distributed shares of ill-gotten money to many government officials and influential political personalities. The CBI is of the view that the scam, arising out of illegal mining from abandoned mines of Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL), runs into thousands of crores of rupees, and part of the crime proceeds were transacted through the hawala route, for which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has joined the probe.