Late-night cop raid at Surjya wife’s NGO

BELDA: Newly elected CPM state secretary and leader of opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra’s wife Usha Mishra on Friday dared the government to arrest her instead of raiding her NGO late at night. Her salvo came a day after yet another raid by the state anti-corruption branch (ACB) at her NGO, Bhagabati Devi Nari Kalyan Samity.
After the fourth in a series of raids late on Thursday night, the ACB team visited the NGO’s office once again on Friday afternoon.Late on Thursday night, the team led by inspector Arijit Biswas reached the office, which also houses the Bhagawati Devi Primary Teachers’ Training Institute, and began a search. The institute’s girls’ hostel is also located there.
The night raid came within hours of the NGO’s director Kartik Acharya and project manager Sudip Mishra submitting some documents at the ACB’s office in Kolkata’s Bhawani Bhavan. The team seized 15 pages of different documents and left shortly after midnight.
In protest against the night raid, Surjya Kanta Mishra’s brother and institute principal Siddhartha Mishra lodged a complaint at Belda police station. In his complaint, Siddhartha said the team members did not show their ID cards to the security staff and began a search.
The ACB team was back on Friday afternoon when it questioned the principal and computer experts besides examining the hard disks of computers in the office. Other employees, including the security staff, were questioned too. Sudip Mishra, NGO project manager and youngest brother of Surjya Kanta Mishra, was summoned for questioning at Bhawani Bhavan during the day.
Reacting to the raid, Usha Mishra said, “The ACB mounted raids on our NGO office from March 10-12 when it seized various papers but couldn’t find any evidence. Why harass our salaried staff during midnight raids? Let them raid my house, seize
our assets and arrest me and my husband. Their sole aim is political. They have to prove that we are corrupt. We are surviving because we are absolutely clean.”