Cops paste court summons on absconding Tulu Mondal’s home in Bengal’s Birbhum

Kolkata, Aug 13 (IANS) The Birbhum District Police in West Bengal on Thursday pasted a court summons on the wall of the residence of an absconding stone quarry owner, Tulu Mondal alias Mohammad Nazibuddin, against whom a red-corner notice was issued last week.

Mondal is under the scanner of both the Birbhum District Police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after cash worth Rs 28 crore and 15 kilograms of gold with an estimated market value of around Rs 22 crore were recovered earlier this month from the residence of his close relative, Minar Mondal.

During interrogation, Minar admitted that the cash and gold recovered from his residence were owned by Tulu and he was only entrusted with the task of keeping them in his possession.

Since Tulu had been absconding since then, the cops last week brought out a “Hulia (a court-issued notice or warrant containing a description for a fugitive suspect)” from a district court in Birbhum and subsequently also issued a red-corner notice.

Now on Thursday morning, the cops pasted copies of that “Hulia” on the wall of Tulu’s residence in Suri, Birbhum district, which had been sealed by the Birbhum District Police earlier this month.

In the “Hulia”, Tulu has been asked to physically appear at the issuing district court in Birbhum by 10 a.m. on August 14. If he fails to appear within the stipulated time, he would be considered a “proclaimed offender” by the court.

In the copies of the “Hulia” — one in English and the other in Bengali — the charges under which Tulu had been framed have also been mentioned.

It is mentioned there that Tulu is being traced following the issuance of an arrest warrant for organised crime, destruction of evidence, and criminal breach of trust; he is hiding to avoid arrest, and in such a situation the district court has marked him as a ‘fugitive’.

“Since the red-corner notice had already been issued against him, he will not have the opportunity to legally escape abroad through any international border, be it airport or sea or land. Once he is declared officially as a ‘proclaimed offender’, the next process will be initiating confiscation of all his properties,” said a district police officer.

Tulu, who started his life as a daily wage earner, witnessed a meteoric rise in his fortune during the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress regime as a close confidant of the erstwhile district president of Trinamool Congress in Birbhum, Anubrata Mondal.

Anubrata, who earlier spent months behind bars after he was arrested first by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and then by the ED in connection with the multi-crore cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal, is currently with the “rebel but majority” faction in Trinamool Congress led by Ritabrata Banerjee.

Besides the state police, the ED has begun the preparatory process to start a probe against Tulu. The central agency officials are currently collecting information from the Birbhum district police in the matter.

Tulu Mondal’s name had also come up in the cattle smuggling case in 2022. He was under the ED’s watch in 2022, and at that time, the Central investigators raided his house and office.

–IANS

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