Mitra faces charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating, misappropriation of funds and deriving undue financial benefits from the Saradha Group
The Saradha noose tightened on Mamata Banerjee on Friday with Central Bureau of Investigation arresting West Bengal Transport Minister and senior Trinamool Congress leader Madan Mitra for his involvement in the affairs of scamster Sudipta Sen's ponzi fund business.
The arrest, done after five hours of questioning of Mitra at CBI's office at Salt Lake near Kolkata, happened when Mitra couldn't satisfactorily explain to the investigators why he was widely seen at Saradha's chit fund agents' meetings attended by Sen and also why he frequented Saradha's head office as revealed by visitors' book and CCTV footage.
Criminal conspiracy, cheating, misappropriation and deriving undue financial benefits from the Saradha Group are some of the charges that CBI brought against Madan, sources said.
While Madan is the ninth person to get arrested so far in the investigation into the Saradha scam, now being handled by CBI replacing state police. Friday's development assumes greater significance as the state transport minister is the first real Trinamool politician, and a mass leader and a close associate of Mamata Banerjee to get arrested indicating that the investigation trail might now reach dangerously close to her.
While it's now beyond doubt that Sudipta Sen and the Trinamool Congress worked up a beneficial symbiotic relation, Madan, like Kunal Ghosh, were the public face of that dependency, making the investigating agency, and the public at large to pin them down.
That the fund trail reached other states, even overseas, to Bangladesh and United States, proves that the co-operation ran deep beyond Madan, former journalist Kunal, or painter Subhaprasanna who was recently questioned by CBI for selling a non-operation TV channel to Sudipta.
Putting up a calm and brave face, Mamata on Friday dared Narendra Modi to arrest her.
"It's an open challenge to Narendra Modi, come and arrest me. Madan had given a resignation letter before he was arrested but I won't accept it. I heard he is being admitted to hospital and I will now go and visit him. CBI can come and arrest me there," Mamata told reporters at the state secretariat reacting to the arrest.
She termed the arrest unconstitutional and a show of brute force of the BJP leadership.
"You arrested a state minister, a colleague of mine but no one including the speaker was informed. Can I arrest any central minister if any one of them visits my state? Its a dangerous precedence. It is a conspiracy to kill democracy in India," she said without refusing to disclose her next course of action.
In a bid to avoid CBI questioning and to buy time Madan had lodged himself at private and state hospitals till recently triggering speculations.
In fact, in an eerie premonition in the virtual world, morphed image of poster of movie Bhaag Milkha Bhhag with Madan's face on it began circulating in the Facebook and Twitter world carrying the tagline Bhaag Madan Bhaag.
BJP leaders lapped it up with party's national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh repeating it at a meeting of party president Amit Shah in Kolkata on December 1.
"In 2015 we would see Bhaag Mukul Bhaag, and in 2016, you guessed it right, we would see Bhaag Mamata Bhaag," Singh said that day amid loud cheer raising the spectre of the current CBI investigation into the Sqaradha scam eventually catching up with state's chief minister.
"Would be be nice if we start declaring Bhaag BJP Bhaag (from Bengal)?" asked Mamata.
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