CBI court issues arrest warrant against TMC youth leader

Kolkata/New Delhi: A special CBI court in Asansol in West Bengal has issued an arrest warrant against "absconding" TMC youth leader Vinay Kumar Mishra in a cross-border cow smuggling racket in West Bengal, sources said on Wednesday.

One of the Trinamool Youth Congress' General Secretaries, Mishra was summoned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) several times in the last one month but he skipped all summonses.

The last summons was served on January 19, the sources said. The agency had also issued a Lookout Notice against him.

The CBI had recently raided Mishra's residence in Kolkata's Rashbihari Avenue area but failed to arrest him since he is "absconding", the sources added.

Meanwhile, sources in Delhi said that CBI teams on Wednesday carried out searches at two locations in West Bengal, including the premises of Trinamool Congress leader Bariq Biswas, about 60-70 km from state capital Kolkata.

The sources said that Biswas' name had cropped up in the cattle smuggling case, adding that Biswas was involved in other smuggling cases earlier too.

The crackdown came ahead of state Assembly polls in April-May this year. The central agency is now probing the larger conspiracy angle to the cattle-smuggling racket.

The CBI had filed an FIR in September last year against six persons, including some Border Security Force and Customs officers, who were allegedly bribed by international cattle smugglers.