Coal mafia don arrested

ASANSOL: Long-wanted coal mafia don, Jaswant Singh Upal, alias Kale Singh, was arrested by Asansol police from a dhaba along NH-2 in Ningha area in the wee hours of Thursday. He was remanded in judicial custody for 14 days by the additional chief judicial magistrate's court in Asansol which rejected his bail petition. After a bloody shootout in the coal belt just days ago, chief minister Mamata Banerjee reportedly submitted a list of the area's mafia dons to director general of police Naparajit Mukherjee and asked him to arrest them. Of late, 12 coal mafia dons have been arrested by various police stations in Asansol. But Kale Singh's name topped the list of dons in the area.Police said Kale Singh has been charged in threecases, one each in Jamuria, Asansol North and Asansol South police stations. Hehas been arrested under sections 379,411,413,414,120B, 30(2) of the Indian PenalCode. Burdwan SP Humayun Kabir claimed that police has been following hismovements for the past few days.Kale Singh shot to fame overnight when he handed over a cheque for 1.11 lakh to former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee last year, breaching Bhattacharjee's Z plus security cover. That was at the foundation stone laying ceremony of Sir Rasbehari Ghosh College in Ukhrid of Khondoghosh on October 10, 2010. After the Trinamool Congress raked up a political storm over it, ADG (law and order) Surajit Kar Purakayastha had sought a report about Singh from then Burdwan SP Rajaram Rajsekharan.Burdwan district judge Ishan Chandra Basu had, onNovember 3 2010, rejected Kale Singh's bail plea in an illegal coal mining caseat Bonbishnupur mouza in Asansol North police station of September 8, 2010.Despite a warrant and severe pressure from the Election Commission against him,Kale Singh managed to evade arrest all this while. In fact, he was trying tochange his political colours just before the polls to run his illegal coalmining empire smoothly.A team comprising Jamuria OC Bikash Dutta andAsansol North OC Sudip Dasgupta went to Amritsar to arrest Kale Singh whomanaged to escape. He was staying in his dhaba-cum-bar at NH-2. In Ningha, KaleSingh runs his own transport agency --- Upal Transport. About a decade ago, KaleSingh came to Asansol from Amritsar as a helper of a truck and joined theillegal coal mining racket after the death of his brother."We arehappy that Kale Singh has been arrested at last. All these arrests of coal mafiadons have been taking place over the past few days due to instructions fromchief minister Mamata Banerjee," said Jitendra Tewari, chairman of AsansolMunicipal Corporation.As law and order has deteriorated in Burdwansince January this year, the chief minister has created a new DIG post atDurgapur exclusively for the Asansol-Durgapur industrial belt. Tough and honestIPS officer Ajay Nanda is set to join as DIG (Durgapur) within the next few daysand his primary job will be to control illegal coal mining and scrap ironrackets active in the state's biggest industrial belt. The chief minister feelsthat it is difficult for the Burdwan SP to control law and order in theAsansol-Durgapur belt from the district headquarters 80 to 100 kilometresaway.