The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Trinamool Congress (TMC) Deganga block unit president Anisur Rehman and his brother, Alif Noor, in connection with the alleged Rs2,000 crore public distribution system (PDS) scam. The arrests followed a night-long interrogation at the ED office in Salt Lake, Kolkata, officials confirmed.
Anisur and Alif are relatives of Abdul Barik Biswas, a rice mill owner whose premises were raided earlier in July. According to an ED official, Anisur and Alif are suspected of forging documents to pose as farmers supplying rice to the government, playing a significant role in the scam.
The investigation into the massive PDS scam deepened when Biswas was found to be a close associate of former food minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who was arrested on October 27 last year. Mallick, along with key figures such as rice mill owner Bakibur Rahaman, and several shell companies, was named in ED’s first charge sheet filed on December 12 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The ED claims the scam siphoned off subsidized grains intended for the PDS system into the open market, profiting illegally during Mallick’s tenure as West Bengal’s food minister from 2011 to 2021. Additionally, money from the scam is suspected to have been transferred abroad, further complicating the case.