Senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday asserted that as the ED has found involvement of a section of BSF personnel in cattle smuggling to Bangladesh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah cannot skirt responsibility on the matter as the force is under his ministry.
The Enforcement Department (ED) in its charge sheet submitted recently before a Delhi court said that a section of the BSF personnel are involved in cattle smuggling. The charge sheet was filed in a case in which senior TMC leader Anubrata Mondal and his daughter were arrested.
Speaking at a public rally at Murarai in Birbhum district, Banerjee said, “I am not defending or shielding anyone... But, under which ministry the BSF functions? The Ministry of Home Affairs. Does anyone have the guts to bring this aspect under the ambit of the investigation? Is Amit Shah ji ready to clarify on this issue?"
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If the property of Mondal's daughter increased exponentially as stated in the ED charge sheet, the TMC national general secretary claimed that the same has happened to Shah's son.
The Diamond Harbour MP, considered the number two in the TMC, said, “I am not casting aspersions on anybody but asking for application of the same yardstick for everyone.”
Anubrata Mondal, the TMC’s Birbhum district president and a close aide of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, was initially arrested by the CBI in connection with the related corruption case. The ED arrested him in the alleged multi-crore cattle smuggling scam case after questioning him in a jail in the state. His daughter was arrested recently. Both are now lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail.
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Continuing his tirade at Shah without naming him, Banerjee said some people came from Delhi to pay respect to Rabindranath Tagore on his birth anniversary but they do not have much knowledge about his compositions. “They can't even differentiate between the national anthem composed by Tagore and the national song penned by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay," he said.
During a programme here on Tuesday, Shah said Tagore is the only poet in the world who wrote the ‘Rashtra geet’ of two countries – India and Bangladesh. In an India government website, Chattopadhyay’s ‘ Vande Mataram’ was referred to as ‘Rashtra geet’ (national song) while Tagore’s ‘Jana Gana Mana’ is the ‘Rashtra gaan’ (national anthem).
Reacting to Banerjee's comments, BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh told PTI: "Why should Amit Shah be held accountable for the ED naming some BSF personnel in the smuggling case. Investigations are on and the central agencies are on the right path. If any central security force personnel is involved, he will be prosecuted according to law.” “Does this mean that for any police firing incident in the state, the chief minister should be interrogated?" he asked.
