The West Bengal Police’s Criminal Investigation Department earlier this month submitted its first chargesheet against former Trinamool MLA Sujoy Hazra and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee’s personal assistant Sumit Roy at the Midnapore court in the Salboni land grab case, claiming that not only were documents forged but also rubber stamps were found in Hazra’s possession.
In the chargesheet, the CID mentioned that rubber stamps of the Block Land and Land Reforms Officer and Block Land and Land Revenue Officer were found.
The chargesheet stated that during the investigation, it was found that Sumit Roy made a huge cash deposit worth Rs 7 crore to a particular bank between 2018 and 2021.
The CID further claimed that two persons who acted as land brokers — Sujoy Bera and Debasish Dey — have claimed in their statements that Hazra had handed over a substantial portion of the money collected from the alleged illegal land transactions to Sumit Roy.
According to the chargesheet, Roy played an important role in the entire racket. Four people have been named as accused in the first chargesheet — Sujoy Hazra, who is in custody; Anitesh Paira, who is on bail; and Kailash Agarwal and Sarfuddin Khan, both of whom are absconding.
The CID has also named 20 witnesses, which include businessmen, local leaders, drivers and land brokers.
Furthermore, the CID said that local witnesses Arjun Manta and Anup Tudu have stated that they have seen Hazra and Sumit Roy exchange money. The witnesses have further said that they did not disclose the matter previously as they were afraid.
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Meanwhile, the CID has been questioning Sumit Roy after taking him into custody. According to CID sources, they are looking for Roy’s mobile phone.
On Wednesday, the CID took Roy to his residence and searched for his mobile but was unable to recover it. According to CID sources, the mobile phone that they have seized is the one that was recently bought, but his older mobiles were not found at his residence.
The CID suspects that Roy has probably hidden the old mobiles to hide evidence of the proceeds of crime.
The CID had arrested Sumit Roy on September 10 from the residence of Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee.
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On Thursday, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana refused to intervene in the Calcutta High Court’s order denying pre-arrest protection, thereby vacating the interim stay on Roy’s arrest granted earlier.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta has previously informed the bench that it was necessary to take Roy into custody as he was not cooperating.
Sumit Roy had appeared before the CID 11 times and faced 88 hours of interrogation in several cases, out of which nine times he had been summoned in the Salboni land scam.
The Calcutta High Court on August 3 rejected Roy’s anticipatory bail plea in the alleged government land fraud case being investigated by Salboni police.
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The case was registered under penal provisions relating to cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery, use of forged documents and criminal conspiracy.
The allegation was that Roy, along with other influential leaders, had sold acres of government land, breaking it into small plots.
According to CID, it is investigating the money trail in the entire scam and how much money was involved.
