Kolkata, Jan 23 (IANS) A special meeting of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), chaired by its Director Rahul Navin, to review the progress of its ongoing investigation in the high-profile financial crime cases in West Bengal, started at the agency’s Kolkata office on Friday.
Navin arrived in Kolkata on Thursday evening.
Sources said that in the review meeting, the progress of the investigation into different high-profile financial crime cases in West Bengal is being discussed.
The entire CGO complex, where the ED office is located, in the Salt Lake area, is under a blanket security cover by the central armed police forces (CAPF) personnel because of the crucial meeting.
The investigating officers probing such have already prepared their respective progress reports for presentation before the Director. The progress reports detail the status of individual cases, agency insiders said.
In the review meeting, Navin is expected to give necessary instructions on what the next steps might be and how the investigation will proceed in the future.
“The meeting will discuss progress on cases like coal smuggling, recruitment irregularities in state-run schools and municipalities in West Bengal, and most importantly, the case related to the involvement of Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) in the coal smuggling case,” a source said.
In the meeting, the ED Director is also expected to give important instructions to be adopted by the investigating officials while going for raid and search operations against the backdrop of the recent controversies over raid and search operations at I-PAC’s Salt Lake office and residence of I-PAC’s co-founder, Pratik Jain.
As the raid and search operations were underway at these two places on the morning of January 6, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, accompanied by senior bureaucrats and police officers, reached both places one after another, and left with several files and electronic documents.
I-PAC had been operating as the vote strategy agency for Trinamool Congress since 2020.
Currently, two petitions and counter-petitions in the matter are being heard at the Supreme Court. The main petition was filed by ED, accusing the Chief Minister of misusing her constitutional authority by creating hindrances to the investigation by a central investigation agency.
There had also been a counter-petition by the Trinamool, accusing the ED of trying to take away important documents relating to the party’s strategy for the forthcoming Assembly elections to hand them over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
–IANS
src/vd
