Congress unsparing on Bengal CM Mamata as CBI questions Abhishek Banerjee's wife Rujira

Congress leader and MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Tuesday has taken a dig at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over her nephew Abhishek's wife Rujira Narula getting summoned by the CBI in connection with the Coal Smuggling case, accusing the ruling party of indulging in corruption on a large scale for years. 

Chowdhary said, "Over so many years, corruption has been taking place on a large scale in collision with the ruling party. This is the present dispensation that has been hand in glove with those criminals, and those criminals are being indulged by the ruling dispensation. this is not a new allegation from us, this has been going on for years. This corruption should be stopped."

He continued, "CBI has found out the relation between those criminals, those coal mafias, those cattle-smugglers with a ruling party. Unholy nexus between the criminals and govt has been established not only in this case but Sharada scam etc. You will witness a long cooperative hand with the present dispensation."

Meanwhile, WB CM Mamata Banerjee visited Abhishek Banerjee's residence in Kolkata on Tuesday ahead of CBI's arrival for questioning. In her reply to CBI, Abhishek's wife  Rujira told CBI that she will be available to answer queries on Tuesday between 11 am to 3 pm, to which the agency complied. Its investigators left at around 1:15 pm on Tuesday after arriving there little over an hour earlier. 

CBI summons Abhishek Banerjee's wife

In a massive development involving the ruling Trinamool Congress in Bengal, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday summoned the wife of Chief Minister Mamata's nephew Abhishek Banerjee in connection with the high-profile coal smuggling scam. Arriving at the TMC MP's residence with a notice on Sunday, the Kolkata CBI officers asked Banerjee's wife to join the probe. Notably, the summons has come days after the central agency conducted raids across five locations in poll-bound West Bengal namely — Kolkata, Asansol, Raniganj, Bardhaman, and Purulia in connection with the case. 

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In the run-up to the elections, the BJP has been alleging that the money from coal sales is whitewashed through shell companies and siphoned into the funds of the ruling party. TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, who is also a Lok Sabha member and the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has been named as the main beneficiary of the purported scam by the saffron party. 

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Meanwhile, reacting to the development, Abhishek Banerjee called the summons a ploy to 'intimidate' them. "At 2 pm today, the CBI served a notice in the name of my wife. We have full faith in the law of the land. However, if they think they can use these ploys to intimidate us, they are mistaken. We are not the ones who would ever be cowed down," he said. 

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