TMC candidate held in explosives seizure case wins gram panchayat seat

Sources said after the raid, Ghosh was first called to the police station and questioned. After hours of questioning, the NIA arrested him under the Explosives Act.

Ghosh had moved the Calcutta High Court to seek relief in the case, however, the NIA had summoned him for questioning as soon as the voting for the panchayat election ended. NIA officials claimed that Ghosh could not give satisfactory answers about the explosives and firearms recovered from his office during the raid. He was arrested due to many inconsistencies in his statement, said an NIA official.

A resident of Bahadurpur village in Birbhum’s Nalhati-1 block, Ghosh is also a key accused in a 2022 explosives seizure case in Birbhum. In July last year, a Special Task Force (STF) team had seized over 81,000 electric detonators from a vehicle in the Md. Bazar Police Station area in Birbhum district.

The three-tier panchayat elections were conducted in a single phase on July 8.
Following the announcement of the rural poll schedule on June 7, widespread incidents of violence were reported in different parts of the state.