'Coal mafia' held in Hooghly

RANIGANJ: Raniganj police on Thursday morning arrested notorious coal mafia Kamal Das from Hooghly's Mogra. Kamal will be produced in court on Friday.
Kamal was picked up for his reported involvement in smuggling 150 tonnes of coal on January 10, this year. On February 29, Kamal was implicated in another FIR lodged at Burdwan's Galsi police station after police intercepted nine trucks loaded with coal.The 160-tonne of smuggled coal would have fetched Rs 50 lakh.
Kamal's purported links with Burdwan-based coal mafias Rajesh Jha and Kale Singh were investigated earlier but police came up with no conclusive evidence to arrest him. Many believe the reason for Kamal evading law , while others have been in and out of jail, many believe is the tremendous political clout that he enjoys.
Kamal's family has links with Congress - his elder brother, a public prosecutor at Chinsurah, had even contested against CPM's Rupchand Pal. But Kamal maintains a rapport with all politicians, cutting across the divide. Of late, he was reportedly hobnobbing with an influential leader of the ruling political alliance in the state.
Earlier, Kamal was arrested from Hooghly's Mogra in the wee hours today. He was arrested in the January 10 case lodged at Ranigunj police station for smuggling of 150 tonnes of coal. Police then had seized six truck loads of illegal coal, which was allegedly being taken to Dankuni from Purulia.
a special task force of Asansol- Durgapur Police Comissionerate raided Dankuni, Gurap and Mogra, all in the Hooghly district, and arrested one Prem Agarwal and seized 30 tonnes of coal from a godown. Agarwal revealed Kamal's name, but the subsequent police raids in January at Kamal's Mogra home yielded nothing for he had given then a slip.
Ajay Kumar Nand, police commissioner, Asansol- Durgapur Police, said, "Acting on a tip off, police have arrested Kamal Das from Mogra.
We will forward him to court on Friday and plead for police remand to enable interrogation. He is a known coal mafia of Hooghly district and resident of Mogra but there was no case against him in Burdwan district before. The first specific case against him here is the Raniganj case on January 10."
Nand said organised illegal coal trafficking has stopped in Raniganj coalfield area and most of the big coal mafia dons like Kale Singh, Rajesh Jha, Joydeb Mondal have been arrested in the past one year and released after court granted them bail. "We are creating new checkposts for special checking of coal-loaded trucks at strategic points," he added. The Police Comissionerate has also urged the state government to cancel trade licenses of soft coke factories operating in Salanpur, Kulti, Baraboni belt without any valid coal linkages, he added.