8 months after Anubrata Mondal arrest, daughter Sukanya Mondal held by ED in Delhi

KOLKATA: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Sukanya Mondal, daughter of Trinamool leader Anubrata Mondal, in Delhi on Wednesday on money-laundering charges in connection with the cattle smuggling scam.
Sukanya, a school teacher, was arrested at 6.30pm, around seven hours since the ED started to question her, and eight months since her father, the TMC's Birbhum president, was held in connection with the same case. She was taken to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital for a check-up, and will be produced in the Rouse Avenue court on Thursday. Her arrest, incidentally, came hours after Delhi High Court said it would hear the default bail plea of Anubrata - arrested on August 11 last year - on June 1.

Though Sukanya has no direct links with politics, her arrest set off a political war of words in Bengal. Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said the Trinamool Congress "has nothing to say on this", but questioned whether the agency needed to arrest her. "Someone who has committed a crime should be punished, but this specific case could have been considered - the person arrested lost her mother recently after prolonged illness. Her father is in prison. She is young and alone. She has grown up under the shadow of her parents. Did they need to arrest her for questioning? The ED has competent officers; couldn't they be more humane?"
BJP Bengal president Sukanta Majumdar said the arrest was "only a matter of time". "The CBI and ED had summoned her repeatedly, but she did not cooperate. She had repeatedly gone to court to evade questioning. She is a school teacher. But the assets that have been traced to her name are disproportionate to her income. She has to answer it," he said.
ED sources said Sukanya had been issued four summons to appear for questioning in Delhi since last year. She had gone to Delhi once - last November - but her lawyers told ED this year that she would be unable to travel to Delhi on account of her ill health.
'Sukanya failed to explain how she built up wealth'
On Wednesday, Sukanya Mondal stepped into the ED office in Delhi around 11am, responding to a summons.
The ED's sources said Sukanya was arrested for evading questions and failing to explain how she accumulated wealth that was not commensurate with her known sources of income. According to them, during questioning on Wednesday, she kept insisting that she was not aware of her assets and bank accounts, even after investigators showed her hard copies of land deeds with her signatures on them.
Members of her legal team in Kolkata were not available for comment.
ED sources said Sukanya has a Rs 3-crore fixed deposit at a Salt Lake branch office of a bank, and another Rs 2 crore at a Bolpur bank. She is the owner of two companies - ANM Agrochem and Neer Developers Pvt Ltd - and the joint owners of two rice mills, Shiv Shambhu Rice Mill and Bhole Bom Rice Mill.
Sources claimed Sukanya and her mother, Chhabi, had purchased property worth Rs 34 crore and most of the deals were in cash. CBI had earlier seized 100 property documents, of which 26 bore Sukanya's name. Land deeds show she bought holdings worth Rs 12 crore between 2015 and 2022.