New Delhi: A Delhi court on Saturday issued a bailable warrant against Rujira Banerjee, the wife of West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee.
The warrant is in connection with a complaint filed by Enforcement Directorate (ED) against Rujira for failing to show up for questioning in ED’s probe into a coal smuggling case.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarvaria passed the order after ED’s special public prosecutor Nitesh Rana told the court that the accused was not appearing before either the court or the probe agency despite several summons.
The court has posted the matter for hearing on August 20.
Abhishek has been questioned by ED twice, but his wife has not deposed before the agency. The couple had moved Delhi High Court against ED’s summons, but the court didn’t grant them any relief.
They have repeatedly stated that ED should question him and his wife in Kolkata, and not in Delhi.
Abhishek was questioned for eight hours in March, while his wife skipped the summons. Rujira, who also excused herself in September 2021, said that travelling to Delhi would “put her life in grave danger amid pandemic”.
The CBI lodged an FIR against Anup Majee, Eastern Coalfield Limited (ECL) and others in November 2020 for illegally extracting coal from the Durgapur-Asansol belt and also from Jharkhand.
The ED then lodged a case under Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
During the probe, the ED allegedly found that two companies — Leaps and Bound Pvt Ltd and Leaps and Bound Management Services LLP — with links to Abhishek and his family received protection funds amounting to Rs 4.37 crore from a construction company via the accused, according to India Today.
Abhishek’s father Amit Banerjee is reportedly one of the directors of Leaps and Bound Pvt Ltd, while Rujira is a director of Leaps and Bound Management Services Limited.
Both companies received funds from business owners to avoid “local-level syndicate issues”, ED officials said.
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