Bengal CID grill cop-turned-BJP candidate Bharati Ghose

West Bengal CID on Friday interrogated former IPS officer and BJP Lok Sabha poll candidate Bharati Ghosh in an extortion case in West Midnapore district's Daspur, an officer said.

The CID sleuths reached Ghosh's residence in Daspur in the morning and pasted a notice at the gate asking her to appear for questioning.

The interrogation, that started in the morning at her residence, was conducted over three sessions and stretched until the evening.

The sleuths sought information from Ghosh in a bid to find some missing links in the probe in connection with the extortion case.

As the questioning continued through the afternoon, some BJP cadres in the area became restive and started shouting slogans.

However, Ghosh asked them not to create a ruckus and let the CID officers do their job. "They are ordinary government servants."

Ghosh, who is fighting the polls as a BJP candidate from Ghatal, accused the state government of "playing dirty".

"Meaningless issues unrelated to the case are being brought up. They wasted the whole campaign time today. They are torturing me. The Trinamool government is playing dirty. They lack the guts to take me on in the political arena."

The CID had previously arrested four police officers in the extortion case while a caretaker of an apartment in south Kolkata was also held.

The CID raids started following a case of extortion and criminal conspiracy lodged in West Midnapore district's Daspur on February 1 last year after gold trader Chandan Majhi complained against some police officers in the district thought to be close to Ghosh, the former district police chief.

The sleuths had earlier seized more than Rs. 2.4 crore in cash, several important government documents and an array of sealed liquor bottles while raiding a number of flats in an apartment in Kolkata's Madurdaha, suspected to be owned by Ghosh while large amount of unaccounted cash was also seized from the house of several police officers named in the FIR.

Ghosh's husband M.A.V. Raju, a chartered accountant, was also arrested in the cash-for-gold case last year.

--IANS

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