Kolkata: Former North Bengal Development minister Udayan Guha on Wednesday became the fourth Trinamool Congress minister to be arrested since the change of government in West Bengal. Police from Dinhata and Kolkata, along with central force personnel, raided Guha's flat in a housing complex in Kankurgachhi and took him into custody in connection with a 10-year-old cheating case. He was then escorted back to north Bengal.
Earlier, former ministers Sujit Bose (fire), Ujjwal Biswas (correctional home) and Dilip Mondal (MoS, transport) were arrested on charges of corruption. Police said Guha was arrested based on a complaint filed on June 11, 2016, by Gopal Saha, husband of Guha's domestic help Gopa and a resident of ward 11 in Dinhata. Saha alleged that the former minister, then chairman of Dinhata municipality, took Rs 43,000 from him to get them a house under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
Guha claimed he was innocent. "I am being targeted. I am not a criminal and I have never cheated anyone," he said while leaving an eatery in Krishnanagar where the police team stopped for lunch on the way to Dinhata. Trinamool MP Saugata Roy claimed the arrest was a "vindictive move" by the BJP government.
Ever since his loss to BJP's Ajay Roy from Dinhata, Guha had been living in Kolkata and was not seen in public. On Wednesday, Dinhata police first reached Guha's New Town address but finding him absent, they approached Phoolbagan police station and together raided Guha's flat at Parvati Residency in Kankurgachhi around noon. A senior resident of the complex said Guha had bought the flat 15 years ago and had been living there with his family for the past month.
Current North Bengal Development minister Nisith Pramanik said this was "just the beginning" and all his aides will also be in the net soon. "The man who did not allow common people of Dinhata to live in peace, who made their lives miserable, who subjected them to unspeakable oppression, that person is Udayan Guha. That tiger has today become a cat, confined in a cage," Pramanik said.
Sources said there were several other complaints against the former minister, including those linked to post-poll violence, intimidation and corruption. On June 11, one Rupam Saha filed a complaint at Dinhata police station accusing Guha of making crores in the name of setting up a modern paediatric unit (Sishu Mangal Samity) at Dinhata Subdivisional Hospital that never saw the light of day. "I had earlier tried to lodge a complaint against Guha but his party was in office and he was a minister. He used his connections to make sure the complaint was never filed," Rupam said.
Guha, son of former Left Front minister Kamal Guha, had joined Trinamool in October 2015. He had won the Dinhata assembly seat in 2011 on a Forward Bloc ticket and again in 2016 as a Trinamool candidate. He lost to BJP's Pramanik in the 2021 assembly polls but after Pramanik resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls, Guha won the bypoll by a huge margin.
