Cops Break Into Abhishek's House To Catch His Aide

A worried TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who lives at Harish Chatterjee Street which is also close to her MP nephew's new address at Patuapara Road, rushed to visit him in the morning after the dramatic search operation ended with a "Nil" seizure. At around 3 am, cops of Salboni police station in West Midnapore along with central forces personnel reached Mr Banerjee's residence.

They also took their colleagues of the Kalighat police station under the Kolkata Police with them for assistance in the raid to look for Sumit following the tower location of his cell phone which had convinced them of his presence there. Sumit, who is a long-time aide of the Diamond Harbour TMC MP, came under the radar of the district police during a probe into a land fraud case in Kharagpur.

The cops found that a huge amount of money was transferred to a bank account of Sumit from another linked to former TMC MLA Sujoy Hazra, who was recently arrested in the same case. While launching the pre-dawn raid at Mr Banerjee's residence, they called him several times for two hours for entry from outside but got no response.

At around 5 am, the disaster management group personnel of the city police were called in to break the locks. The cops finally trooped into Mr Banerjee's residence at around 6.30 am after locks were broken and gates were opened. They searched it for around 90 minutes but could not find Sumit there and left the address later. Learning about the police hunt, Ms Banerjee visited her nephew immediately and spoke to him inside for a while but avoided speaking to the media.

Mr Banerjee later told the media, “They broke the locks and searched my entire house.” Asked about Sumit, the TMC national general secretary however said, “You should pose that question to the police who searched my house thoroughly. I am not the police spokesperson.”