District Child Welfare Officer, Child Welfare Committee member held

The CID arrested Mrinal Ghosh, District Child Welfare Officer, Darjeeling along with one Dr Debasish Chanda, Member, Child Welfare Committee, Darjeeling, on Friday night.

The CID has allegedly found incriminating evidences against Ghosh including monetary transactions with the owner of the homes. Debasish Chanda used to work on the behest of Ghosh claim CID sources.

He had tampered with the registers keeping record of the inmates, especially children and newborns manipulating date of births and arrivals of a newborn or a child.

Anurag Shrivastava, District Magistrate, Darjeeling state: "DCPO Darjeeling and CWC were show-caused on Thursday for sending children to the Jalpaiguri home and releasing them without involving CWC Jalpaiguri along with some other irregularities. The reply of the show-cause is awaited."

The two accused will be produced at the Jalpaiguri Chief Judicial Magistrate Court on Saturday. CID will be praying for 14-day remand for the two arrested.

Before the arrests, Mrinal had been interrogated by the CID sleuths.

They also quizzed his wife Sashmita Ghosh who is the District Child Protection Officer, Jalpaiguri. The CID is keeping a close watch on Sahmita too, claim sources. Meanwhile, CID sources claimed that BJP leader Juhee Chowdhury's cell phone call records show that she was in touch with the influential leaders whose names have been doing the rounds along with certain Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) officials of Delhi.

The statements of Surendranarayan Chowdhury, Juhee's uncle; his son Sukanta Chowdhury and a family friend Papiya Chowdhury of Anandanagar, Mainaguri were recorded under Section 164 CrPC in Judicial Magistrate, 2nd Court, Jalpaiguri on Friday.

As per Juhee's direction, amounts of Rs 50 thousand each were electronically transferred to 3 accounts from Surendranarayan's personal bank account on February 13.

Again, on February 16, a sum of 1 lakh each was transferred to two accounts from Papiya's account to Juhee. They will be treated as witnesses in this case.

With the arrest of Juhee, her relatives had gone to the CID camp in Pintail village and informed the sleuths of the monetary transactions.

The accounts in which the Rs 3.5 lakh were transferred to, belong to persons close to Chandana Chakroborty, owner of the three homes. CID has already interrogated 12 persons in connection with this case.

Incidentally Juhee has been accused in a child trafficking and an international illegal adoption racket involving 3 Homes in Jalpaiguri.

She had been arrested from Batasi on the Indo-Nepal border under the Kharibari police station in the Darjeeling district late on Tuesday night.