Suri: Birbhum police on Wednesday raided the house of a retired govt bus driver in Deucha village and seized gold bars and biscuits worth around Rs 21.5 crore, along with two trunkloads of cash. The cash haul had crossed Rs 28.5 crore by late evening, with bundles of notes still being counted.Officers said Minar Mondal, owner of the two-storey house and a relative of influential stone trader Tulu Mondal, and his son were being questioned about the source of the seized wealth and whether they had stashed money and gold at any other location. Five cash-counting machines and several gold-weighing scales were used to assess the worth of the haul.The entire area was cordoned off for the search, which began in the early hours. Several high-ranking district police officers, including ASP Nilesh Gaikwad and DSP (law and order) Kunal Mukherjee, supervised the raid.Minar’s kin Tulu Mondal, a prominent stone trader in the district, was a stone revenue collector during the tenure of the Trinamool govt. Sources said that after retiring from his govt job, Minar was assigned a key responsibility by Tulu. “Minar was in charge of collecting revenue from stone-filled trucks at one of the seven toll gates in the quarry belt of Deucha. Investigators are trying to find out whether he had siphoned off a chunk of the money meant for the govt coffers,” a source said.Tulu was considered a close associate of Anubrata Mondal, once a Trinamool strongman in the district. He was accused of operating illegal stone quarries and implicated in a cattle smuggling case. ED had raided his home and office in 2022. Within 48 hours of the raid, the district police arrested him in a murder case. He was released on bail and allegedly went into hiding after the assembly poll results were declared on May 4.Tulu had grabbed eyeballs in Dec 2024 by hosting a lavish reception for his daughter’s wedding. Celebrities from Bollywood and the Bengali entertainment industry attended the reception in an extravagant venue modelled on the iconic Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur.CM Suvendu Adhikari thanked police for Wednesday’s operation. He posted on X, “The work of our law enforcement agencies in taking strict action against the sand mafia is commendable. Birbhum Police conducted a major raid at the hideout of illegal operator Tulu Mondal — alias Mohammad Najibuddin — in the Mohammad Bazar police station area.”He wrote, “Let it be unequivocally clear: no person with a chequered past who has amassed wealth through the exploitation of public resources and hobnobbing with the then ruling political party will be spared.” He commended the director general of police, superintendent of Birbhum police and district police personnel for the success of the operation.Kunal Ghosh, spokesperson for the Trinamool faction loyal to Mamata Banerjee, said that while those responsible for such crimes should not be spared, the govt should also investigate netas who allegedly patronised such activities. “I hear that those responsible for such crimes were closely linked to netas who now brand themselves as ‘good Trinamool’. I will urge the govt to delve deeper and identify those who shielded such criminals and benefited from their illegal earnings,” he said.
