“Ready To Be Hanged”: Mamata Banerjee’s Nephew On Money Laundering Probe

Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee today said he was ready for a probe into the alleged money laundering case that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned him to New Delhi for.If the allegations against him are proven, the Diamond Harbour MP said, he was willing to be hanged in public.

Mr Banerjee, the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has been asked to appear before the ED in New Delhi tomorrow in connection with an investigation into the alleged theft of coal from mines in West Bengal’s Asansol area in connivance with public sector officers.

His wife, Rujira Banerjee, too, was asked to appear before the agency on September 1. She, however, refused. Citing her two young children, she asked ED to question her at her Kolkata home instead.

“I reiterate what I had said in November at public meetings. That if any central agency can prove my involvement in any illegal transaction of even 10 paise, there will be no need to hold any CBI or ED probe. I will walk up the podium and get myself hanged publicly,” Mr Banerjee told reporters at the Kolkata airport on his way to New Delhi.

“I am ready for any investigation. But why aren’t they making things public? For a Kolkata-based case they have summoned me to Delhi.”

Without naming West Bengal’s Leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, he asked why the BJP legislator was not charge-sheeted in the Narada bribery case.

“Those seen on TV putting out their hands and taking cash shamelessly…why are ED and CBI turning a blind eye to them? Why aren’t their names on charge sheets?” he asked.

Mr Adhikari, a close lieutenant of Chief Minister Banerjee till a few months ago, now has to appear before the state police tomorrow in connection with a probe into the unnatural death of one of his security guards in 2018.

The BJP lost the state polls it fought under Mr Adhikari’s leadership in May.

“They have lost to Trinamool in the elections and, unable to face us politically, they are doing vendetta politics,” Mr Banerjee said.