The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday questioned Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s sister-in-law Menaka Gambhir for more than seven hours in connection with the ongoing probe into the coal pilferage case.
This was Menaka’s second visit to the agency’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake in the last 12 hours. She, accompanied by her lawyer, was seen at the ED office on Sunday midnight, claiming that she was summoned at 12:30am. Calling it a typographical error, the agency later clarified that the notice served on her wrongly mentioned the time of appearance as “12:30am” instead of “12:30pm”.
Menaka (30), who was last questioned by the CBI in February last year, on Monday filed a contempt petition in the the Calcutta High Court against the ED, alleging that a lookout circular was issued against her even as the HC has passed an order directing the agency to not take any coercive action against her. She was stopped at the Kolkata airport from boarding a flight to Bangkok on Saturday night, with the Immigration Department officials citing an ED lookout circular on her name in the coal smuggling case.
The High Court had in August directed the ED to question Menaka at its regional office in Kolkata and not in Delhi, and also not to take coercive steps against her till the next date of hearing. She had challenged an ED summons that asked her to appear before it in Delhi on September 5 in connection with the coal scam case, seeking direction to the agency to allow her to appear before it in Kolkata.
The ED on September 2 had questioned Abhishek, nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, for nearly 6 hours.
The alleged multi-crore coal pilferage scam is related to the Eastern Coalfields mines in West Bengal’s Kunustoria and Kajoria. The ED had filed a case under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
