Kolkata, Nov 2 (IANS) West Bengal’s Birbhum police said on Monday that it has arrested a retired government official for his alleged links to absconding stone quarry owner Tulu Mondal, also known as Mohammad Nazibuddin, in connection with an ongoing investigation into illegal stone quarry operations and alleged accumulation of illicit wealth.
The arrested retired bureaucrat, Rabiul Islam, was once the deputy district land and land reforms department officer of Birbhum, his native district, as well as the operational zone of Tulu Mondal, a close confidant of former district president of Birbhum, Anubrata Mondal.
He retired from his bureaucratic services this year.
Islam will be presented at a lower court in Suri in Birbhum district later on Monday, and the public prosecutor will seek his police custody.
According to police, a charge sheet filed on October 13 in the case named 12 accused. While 11 of them have already been arrested, the main accused, Tulu Mondal, remains at large. Rabiul Islam, whose name also figured in the charge sheet, had evaded arrest until the latest operation in which the police found him after a raid on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday.
Islam is not the first bureaucrat to be arrested in the case linked to Tulu Mondal. On October 4 this year, the Birbhum District Police arrested the then block land revenue officer (NLRO) Sabyasachi Mondal of Mohammadbazar block in the same district.
Later, he was produced in court and sent to jail. This time, the arrest of the retired deputy district land officer Rabiul Islam in the same case has added a new dimension to the investigation.
The names of several administrative-level officials have been in the news since the beginning of this case involving Tulu Mondal. In addition to arresting the accused named in the charge sheet, the police are also expanding the scope of the investigation.
Birbhum police have so far confiscated Rs 220 crore worth of assets in the form of cash and gold owned by Tulu Mondal, his relatives and close associates. All these relatives and associates had confessed to the investigating officers that these assets were owned by Tulu, and they had to store them at their residences under pressure from the stone-baron.
–IANS
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