West Bengal: 2 arrested in Kolkata for threatening railway staff by impersonating as Abhishek Banerjee's secretary

Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], June 11 : Two persons have been arrested on allegations of attempting to cheat and threaten the General Manager (GM) of Eastern Railway. One of the accused impersonated himself as the second personal secretary of Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee.

A complaint was filed with the Kolkata Police on behalf of the Eastern Railway, the police officials said.

"The detective department took charge of the investigation and claimed that two accused had already been arrested in connection with this case," the police said in a statement.

As per the police, the accused individual, Bivash Sarkar, allegedly reached out to the General Manager (GM) via email with the intention of securing a railway tender for the route connecting Rampurhat and Swadinpur in Bengal.

"Eastern Railway received an email from the email id of one Biswanath Sarkar, wherein he impersonated himself as "2nd personal Secretary to Abhishek Banerjee and demanded to release an amount of Rs 5,87,82,203 as tender amount immediately," the police said, adding that the same person later called at the office of General Manager Eastern Railway from his mobile phone and "threatened the officials with dire consequences and demanded extortion money and thereby tried to cheat them".

Accordingly, an enquiry was duly made and thereafter a case was registered against Bivash and Biswanath and others at Hare Street PS under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Information Technology (IT) Act .

One of the accused, Bivash Sarkar, was arrested and his mobile phone was seized.

According to the police, he confessed during the interrogation. He was produced before the chief metropolitan magistrate court in Kolkata and was remanded in police custody till June 19.

Another accused, Biswanath Sarkar, was arrested from his residence at around 9 pm on Saturday.