The Enforcement Directorate (ED) went red when TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee’s sister-in-law Maneka Gambhir reached its office in Kolkata at midnight after a notice was issued to her in a money laundering case asking her to appear . Before the agency on September 12 at 12.30 am.
Dressed in a blue kurta, Ms Gambhir reached the ED office at the CGO premises in the Salt Lake area and posed for a photograph in front of a closed office with a notice, which the agency later termed as a “typographic error”.
Ms. Gambhir later told a local news channel, “I was given a notice to report at 12:30 and that’s why I came.” He was accompanied by a lawyer during his midnight visit to the ED office.
Ms Gambhir was summoned by agency officials at the Kolkata airport on September 10 to appear at the ED office in Kolkata on September 12 after she was refused an international flight. The agency said it was to join the investigation in an alleged coal scam case.
They have been issued fresh summons to appear before the agency at around 2 pm, officials said. Sources said the midnight time printed on the earlier summons was a “typographic error” and incorrect and it should have been “12:30 pm” on September 12.
The ED has not yet questioned Ms. Gambhir in this case. The CBI had earlier questioned him in the said case.
The Calcutta High Court in August directed the ED to question Gambhir 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.
Ms Gambhir had challenged the ED’s summons asking her to appear in Delhi on September 5 in connection with the alleged coal scam case and sought the court’s direction to the agency to bring her before it in Kolkata. Allow to appear where she claimed she lives.
The ED has earlier questioned West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee and Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary and his wife Rujira in this case.
The ED is probing the case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), in which Anup Majhi is said to be the kingpin of a money laundering case related to coal mining thefts related to the mines of Eastern Coalfield Limited in and around Kunustoria and Kajora. . Asansol in West Bengal.