NIA now wants to question prime accused in Bengal cattle scam in explosives case

Kolkata: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) now wants to investigate Sehgal Hosain, the bodyguard of Trinamool Congress heavyweight Anubrata Mondal and also one of the prime accused in the alleged multi-crore cattle smuggling case in West Bengal, in connection with an explosives case in the state.

Both Hossain and Mondal are currently serving judicial custody at Tihar jail in New Delhi with regard to the alleged cattle smuggling scam.

A team of NIA officials will soon visit Tihar jail and question Hossain there, sources said.

They want to question Sehgal in connection with a previous case in relation to the recovery of 81,000 detonators from a passenger-van in the Muhammadbazar area of Birbhum district on June 30, 2022.

The detonators were seized by the sleuths of the Special Task Force (STF) of state police.

Three persons were also arrested by the STF sleuths in this connection, the first from Raniganj area in West Burdwan district and the other two from Dhuliyan area in Murshidabad district.

The NIA took charge of the investigation on September 29 of the same year and filed the charge sheet in the case within 90 days after the beginning of the investigation.

In July this year, the NIA sleuths also arrested a local Trinamool Congress leader from Birbhum Manoj Ghosh. It is learnt that the use of detonators is quite common in pockets of Birbhum, which houses a number of stone quarries.

The detonators are used to blast stone blocks in the area for the purpose of use in stone quarries.

However, this was the first time that detonators of such a huge quantity were recovered from the district. This made the investigation sleuths doubt that such a huge quantity was taken with any other purpose.