Sukanya Mondal's frequent lottery awards come under CBI scanner

Kolkata, Nov 11 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the multi-crore cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal, has come across more instances of Trinamool Congress strongman Anubrata Mondal and his daughter Sukanya Mondal winning lotteries.

While checking the bank accounts of Sukanya Mondal, the CBI officials have traced a credit of Rs 50 lakh to one of the bank accounts of Sukanya Mondal as a lottery award. This is the fifth lottery whose award prizes went to the credit of either Sukanya Mondal or her father.

As per records traced by the CBI sleuths, this lottery with an award of Rs 50 lakh was credited to Sukanya Mondal in January, 2020.

This January, her father, Anubrata Mondal won a lottery award of Rs 1 crore.

Apart from these two, the CBI earlier traced three similar lottery award proceeds going to bank accounts of Mondal and his daughter.

Two lottery award prizes amounting to a total of Rs 51 lakh were transferred in two phases, -- Rs 25 lakh and Rs 26 lakh -- to the bank account of Sukanya Mondal in the closing quarters of 2018.

A few months after that in 2019, another lottery award prize of Rs 10 lakh was transferred to the account of Anubrata Mondal.

The CBI officials are of the opinion that it cannot be just a coincidence that so many lottery awards had been credited to the accounts of the father and daughter within a period of little over three years.

Meanwhile, political slugfest has started over the development. The BJP's national vice- president and party Lok Sabha member, Dilip Ghosh ridiculed the matter and claimed that probably the members of the Mondal family purchased the lottery tickets consulting any astrologer who always made the right prediction.

CPI(M) central committee member, Sujan Chakraborty said it cannot be a matter of coincidence that not just Anubrata Mondal or his daughter, but many other Trinamool Congress leaders or their relatives are frequently winning lottery awards. "Actually, these are ways to divert unaccounted money," he said.

Trinamool Congress state general secretary and the party spokesman, Kunal Ghosh downplayed the development and said that some people have the habit of regularly purchasing lottery tickets, which is a legal business in India and operated under rules framed by the Union government