Kolkata Police on Wednesday arrested former West Bengal minister Indranil Sen over financial irregularities in holding Durga Puja preview shows and the sale of passes, with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari claiming his predecessor Mamata Banerjee may have benefitted, and it would be wrong to assume only Sen pocketed the money.
“An investigation has been underway against him for a long time. The ED has been probing the case, and so has the Kolkata Police. They must have found something. But it would be wrong to think that Indranil Sen kept all the money for himself. He may have shared the spoils with Mamata Banerjee. It is not just him; the investigation will reach even bigger names.
The singer and former tourism and culture minister in the previous TMC government was arrested after hours of grilling by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Kolkata Police into the “financial irregularities” committed by MassArt Society, with which Sen and his wife Madhuchhanda were allegedly associated, in managing Durga Puja ‘preview shows’. Reacting to the development, Adhikari, while addressing a press conference at state secretariat Nabanna, said the arrest followed an investigation by the ED and Kolkata Police, which, he claimed, must have found evidence warranting legal action. Just wait and watch,” he said. “All institutional thieves will have to go to jail,” he said, asserting that the law would take its course irrespective of how powerful those under investigation were. “She and Indranil Sen complemented each other,” he said, alleging that the former minister could not have operated alone.
Sen’s arrest comes amid heightened scrutiny of alleged corruption cases involving former ministers of the previous TMC government. MassArt Society was set up after Kolkata’s Durga Puja received UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage recognition in 2021, according to sources. Former state fire services minister Sujit Bose was arrested on May 11 in a separate municipal recruitment case
Madhuchhanda Sen is its president, while Dhrubajyoti Bose is the secretary, Sayantan Mitra the vice-president and Ranjan Chatterjee the treasurer, the ED had said.
