Cattle smuggling: Land donated to charitable trust now owned by Anubrata Mondal under CBI scanner

Kolkata:  The CBI officials probing the multi-crore cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal have come across plots of land in Birbhum district which are owned by a company with Trinamool Congress Anubrata Mondal’s daughter Sukanya Mondal as director, but were originally donated to a charitable trust.

What has left the investigation officials intrigued is that these plots of land were sold to ANM Agrochem Foods Private, where Sukanya Mondal is one of the two directors, at a price much lower than the existing market price.

The central agency sleuths suspect an arm-twisting angle in the entire process of donated land to a charitable trust being sold to ANM Agrochem at a later stage. Sources said that there might be two possibilities in this entire land sale process, where either the charitable trust concerned was somehow compelled to sell the donated land at a price much lower to market rate or the original landowner was compelled to donate the land only to be subsequently sold to the said company at a later stage.

As per CBI sources, their sleuths will now question the top-office bearers of the said charitable trust’s office at Bolpur in Birbhum, where Mondal is Trinamool Congress’s district president, on what circumstances they sold the donated land to ANM Agrochem and that too at a price much lower than the existing market rate. They will also quiz the original land owner on whether he donated the land near about one acre voluntarily or under any compulsion.

This is not the first instance of property being transferred to Mondal’s daughter at a price much lower than the existing market rate. On Friday morning, the CBI officials also questioned one individual Shyamal Mondal, son of late Haradhan Mondal, the owner of Shree Guru Rice Mill at Bolpur.

However, in 2013, that rice mill was reportedly sold and renamed as Bhole Byom Rice Mills. As per records, Mondal’s deceased wife Late Chobi Mondal and daughter Sukanya Mondal are joint owners of the new entity. The sale deed was completed at a price of just Rs 5 crore, which is one- third of the- then market rate of Rs 15 crore.

–IANS