'Rumoured' Calcutta chartered accountant in custody- Governor tweets

Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar's tweets come as curious ripples after arrest in the run-up to the state Assembly elections

Govind Agarwal : Telegraph picture

Monalisa Chaudhuri  |   TT   |   Calcutta   |    23.11.20  :  A Calcuttan who offers accounting services has been arrested by the city police in connection with a corruption case against an income-tax officer, soon after which governor Jagdeep Dhankhar tweeted about “alarming worrisome inputs from CA fraternity” and a “politically inspired operation”.

Govind Agarwal, who was arrested early Sunday morning from his south Calcutta home, is not a certified chartered accountant, police sources said. But in the circles he moved around, Agarwal is “rumoured” to be a chartered accountant, they added. 

Alarmingly worrisome inputs from CA fraternity-politically inspired operation overzealousy afoot @KolkataPolice headed #DD targets CAs-strategy-fishing for material to handicap team members that raided mafia #coal #cattle.

Why forget “Be ye never so high, the law is above you.”

— Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) November 22, 2020

The governor's tweets, which were posted around 8am on Sunday, made no mention of Agarwal who is now in judicial custody.

The income-tax department reports to the Centre, which has faced charges of unleashing central agencies on state governments helmed by Opposition parties. Calcutta police report to the Bengal government, now run by the Trinamul Congress.

In the run-up to elections — Bengal is heading to Assembly polls in a few months — some parties in power had been accused of using state agencies to squeeze the funding sources of rivals.

In his fifties, Agarwal, whose office is in Mangoe Lane in central Calcutta, had been named as a co-conspirator in a two-year-old corruption case against Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Neeraj Singh, who was additional director of the income-tax department in Calcutta a few years ago. Singh is under suspension now.

The sources said the police were trying to establish if he had any links with a suspected racket in which a section of income tax officials intimidated businesspersons and directed them to handpicked individuals to “sort out” matters by arranging bribes. These individuals could also have been used to “legalise” the proceeds of the corruption, the sources said.

More professionals in the accounting business are under the scanner, police sources said.

“There have been several instances of city businessmen who had been raided or summoned by the income-tax department receiving phone calls from an individual offering accounting solutions,” a source with business contacts told this newspaper after Agarwal was arrested.

To illustrate the alleged style of functioning, a businessman said he was told by a particular fixer: “Humko section mat samjhaiye; sirf kya karna hai bataiye (Please don’t explain the section of the tax law to me; just tell me what needs to be done).”

Curiously, on the same day Agarwal was arrested, governor Dhankhar posted three tweets expressing concern at Calcutta police “targeting” the “CA fraternity”. Without mentioning Agarwal, the tweets appeared to suggest that a tit-for-tat crackdown was under way for the CBI raids on Bengal’s coal and cattle mafia.

“Alarming worrisome inputs from CA fraternity-politically inspired operation overzealously afoot@KolkataPolice headed by #DD targets CAs-strategy-fishing for material to handicap team members that raided mafia #coal #cattle. Why forget

‘Be ye never so high, the law is above you’,” Dhankhar tweeted.

Beneficiaries in ‘uniform’ and power in preemptive mode to compromise team members #coal #cattle mafia raids to neutralize or impede actions against them.

Those spearheading this extra legal antidotal operation are oblivious that these misadventures are often counterproductive.

— Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) November 22, 2020

In another tweet, the governor said: “Beneficiaries in ‘uniform’ and power in pre-emptive mode to compromise team members #coal #cattle mafia raids to neutralise or impede actions against them. Those spearheading this extra legal antidotal operation are oblivious that these misadventures are often counterproductive.”

An alleged coal mafia leader had been summoned by the income-tax department earlier this month while a suspected cattle smuggler had been arrested by the CBI recently.

Agarwal had come under the police’s scanner in December 2016, shortly after the demonetisation, when three people were arrested for allegedly having on them Rs 1.04 crore in unaccounted old currency, officers said.

The trio had allegedly told the police they were carrying the money to Agarwal’s Mangoe Lane office to be exchanged for new currency.

Files, documents and data seized from Agarwal’s office at the time suggested a nexus between him, Neeraj Singh (the income tax officer) and the then director of the Rose Valley group of industries, Gautam Kundu, the police sources said. Kundu had been in jail since March 2015 in connection with a deposit default scam.

Based on their preliminary findings, officers of Hare Street police station — in whose area Mangoe Lane falls — started a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act against Singh, the income-tax officer, in 2018, naming Agarwal as a co-accused.

On the basis of the same FIR, the Enforcement Directorate — the central agency that was probing the Rose Valley default scam — started a parallel case against Singh.