Juhee Chowdhury arrested

Juhee Chowdhury, BJP Mahila Morcha state secretary, has been arrested by the Crime Investigation Department from Batashia village at the Indo-Nepal border on Tuesday night in connection with the Jalpaiguri child trafficking case. The CID officers suspect that Juhee was planning to flee and hide somewhere in a neighbouring country. Acting on a tip-off, two officers of the special operations group of the CID along with policemen from Jalpaiguri, conducted a raid and arrested Juhee from the hideout.

Meanwhile, Chandana Chakraborty, the prime accused of the case, said: "I have been made the scapegoat. I was about to retire from my posts in the homes for destitute children and another short-stay home. She had assured that she would take all necessary steps to get all sorts of clearances to run the homes.

Juhee was directly involved with the entire process of running the homes for the past three years. Thus, if anything wrong has taken place, then it has been done by them."

Urging the CID officers to look into the "political side" of the entire incident, Chandana raised a question: "Does anyone take initiative to go to Delhi to take up the matters with leaders like BJP MP Roopa Ganguly and the party's national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya without any vested interests?"

Claiming herself to be innocent, she enquired that why she has been made "culprit" when they were well aware of "everything". When asked whether she had met any of the senior leaders, Chandana claimed: "I didn't meet anyone. Juhee had discussions with Roopa Ganguly and Kailash Vijayvargiya. I was sitting in one room when Juhee went to the adjacent room and had discussions with both of them."

She also demanded interrogation of Juhee as, according to her, the BJP Mahila Morcha's state secretary was more conversant about the entire incident.

The investigating officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) have got hold of a recording of conversation between Juhee and Vijayvargiya's confidential secretary Prasant Sarin. After going through the recording of the telephonic conversation, the investigating officers are planning to question the confidential secretary.

The officers also came to know that the meeting between Juhee, Ganguly and Vijayvargiya was held on January 10 and 11. Thus, the CID officers are now trying to get hold of Juhee to verify the reason behind taking Chandana to Delhi along with her when he met the senior leaders of her party.

Saying that it is not mandatory that she has to give a reply to the questions asked based on the statement of the accused (Chandana), Ganguly said: "This is nothing apart from political conspiracy."