Kolkata: Two Assistant Director ranked officers will jointly head the Enforcement Directorate (ED) team probing money-laundering cases in West Bengal, with a special focus on the multi-crore cash for school job case.
According to sources, officer R. Kumar is being brought to the ED’s Kolkata office from Gangtok to jointly head the team of sleuths probing the cases.
Meanwhile, Mukesh Kumar has taken charge as an assistant director in the matter, replacing his predecessor Mithilesh Kumar Mishra.
Mithilesh Kumar Mishra was replaced following an order from the Calcutta High Court which said that he should not be involved in any money-laundering probe in West Bengal.
Agency insiders said that the induction of a new officer as the joint head will elieve the pressure on just one officer as head of the investigation.
Besides the school job case, the other cases relating to money laundering include coal and cattle smuggling and municipalities’ recruitment cases.
Already the initiative has started regarding the induction of additional investigating officers in the Kolkata office of the agency.
Recently, information surfaced that there are six investigating officers in the ED’s Kolkata office, with four more officers in the superior ranks monitoring the progress of investigations in the cases.
Currently, a total of 131 cases of money laundering are under the jurisdiction of the ED’s Kolkata office, which effectively means that each of these six field investigation officers is handling as many as around 22.
–IANS