Another godown for dumpyard meat, this time in Manicktala

KOLKATA: Carcass meat racket kingpin Biswanath Ghorui on Friday led the special investigation team of CID to another cold storage in the heart of the city where the accused reportedly stocked the meat brought from dumpyards. The cops said they found around 300 packets of meat from the cold storage on Canal East Road, 400m from Manicktala police station and close to the Manicktala Sahitya Parishad bus stand.

The CID, though, refused to officially call it carcass meat, stating that the sample has been sent to KMC food inspectors for further testing to ascertain its quality. Three cold storage rooms on the first floor of the mammoth structure have been sealed by the CID.




This is the second cold storage to which Ghorui had access — the first one was in Rajabazar, barely 2.5km from this one. The joint team of CID and KMC also raided two more godowns on Friday — one further down Manicktala and the other in Rajabazar — as part of its effort to nab all members of the gang.

KMC sources said they will hand over the seized meat to the state officials who would then arrange for further tests.

The raids began around 8.45am. “We first raided the residence of the cold storage owner at Beniapukur. But we found that just like the cold storage owner of Rajabazar (Asish Jhunjhunwala) and the meat trader from New Market, even this accused had fled. We then went to the cold storage and found it in working condition. But all the workers had absconded,” said a senior CID official.

TOI went to the spot only to be greeted by a foul smell. Though the ground floor stored eggs, oranges and fish, the foul smell was coming only from the first floor. “We found out that meat started being stored here only about a decade ago. Earlier, only fish and fruits were stored here for the local Manicktala Market. For the past three years, we found that meat used to arrive only at night. This made us suspicious,” said Surajit Pal, a local.

DIG (operations) Nishat Pervez said they will comment on the nature of the meat only after the report reaches them.