TMC, whose strongman Anubrata Mondal's daughter was arrested by the ED on Wednesday, said that the party has "zero tolerance" for corruption but there should not be any politics of vendetta by the BJP against its political opponents.
The Enforcement Directorate arrested the TMC leader's daughter Sukanya in Delhi on Wednesday on money laundering charges linked to an alleged cattle smuggling case. Reacting to Sukanya's arrest, TMC state spokesperson Kunal Ghosh told a TV channel that the party will not be on the side of any wrongdoer as it has "zero tolerance" for corruption. "But we wonder if Sukanya could not be interrogated outside the jail first."
He said, "We (TMC) are confronted with the thought whether this arrest is another manifestation of the vendetta politics by BJP" and hoped that the investigations by the central agency will be fair and unbiased.
Ghosh, who is also the TMC state general secretary, wondered why the central agencies have not taken any action against BJP leaders whose names figured in monetary scandals and have not been questioned by the probe agencies "even once".
"Why has no action been taken against BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari despite being named in the Saradha and Narada scams? Why has BJP leader Dilip Ghosh not been questioned even once though his name was found in a copy of a land deed in the possession of an accused in the teachers' recruitment scam? We want CBI and ED to be impartial in their probe," he added.
BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar said the ED probe has found that Sukanya had amassed huge amounts of wealth within a few years disproportionate to her known sources of income.
"She is young and had been a primary school teacher for a short time. But she has crores in her account. Where did she get so much money?" he asked. Majumdar said that according to reports she was not cooperating with the investigators. "Now with the ED taking her into custody, the money trail will be known," he added.
Sukanya was interrogated by the ED a few times in the past as well. Anubrata Mondal, the Birbhum district president of the TMC, was arrested by CBI in August last year for his alleged involvement in cattle smuggling and was also named in the charge sheet filed by the agency in the case. He was arrested by the ED, which probes the money trail, as well.