Kolkata: Indranil Sen walked out of the Enforcement Directorate's office on Wednesday evening and into a police van. On Thursday, the Bankshal court sent the former West Bengal minister and singer to police custody till November 10 in the Durga Puja pass sale case.
Sen, a former Trinamool Congress MLA from Chandernagore who held the information and culture portfolio, appeared at the ED's Salt Lake office on Wednesday for questioning in the alleged multi-crore pass scam. He was questioned for at least four hours before a Kolkata Police detective department team detained him and took him to Lalbazar.
In court, the prosecution opposed his bail plea. Sen's lawyer said a special leave petition is pending before the Supreme Court and that he had cooperated with the investigation, and maintained that the allegations against him are false.
"We found crores were transacted through him, for which he could not provide any explanation," joint commissioner of police (crime) Kunal Aggarwal said, according to reports.
The case began with a written complaint at Bowbazar police station by international travel consultant Joydeep Mukherjee. The complaint alleged that Sen and his wife Madhuchhanda used an organisation called MassArt to sell tickets priced between Rs 4,000 and Rs 12,000 for access to 24 popular Durga Puja pandals, and fabricated a partnership with Unesco, which the agency later denied. MassArt was set up in 2022. As part of the probe, the ED searched 15 locations associated with Sen on September 29.
Sen and his wife have denied financial irregularities. Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh has called the probe politically motivated, and said earlier that about Rs 30 lakh transferred by Sen's record company to the former chief minister were legal royalty payments for her songs and literary work, accounted for with TDS deductions.
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari tied the arrest to the former chief minister. "Both ED and Kolkata Police were investigating him. They must have found evidence, and legal action was taken on that basis," he said, alleging that Mamata Banerjee was also involved in the scam.
Sen's arrest adds to a long list of Trinamool leaders booked since May on allegations ranging from corruption to extortion, including former ministers Sujit Bose, Udayan Guha and Dilip Mondal.