Trinamool Congress and the Cow Smuggling Network

On November 21, 2019, Kolkata witnessed an unprecedented shower of banknotes from a building in the central area of the city when the officials of the Department of Revenue Intelligence raided it in connection with hawala transaction. The office of the concerned company that was raided ostensibly dealt with international trade. The video footage of the raid and the consequent shower of banknotes of denominations of rupees five hundred and two thousand had raised many eyebrows at that time.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg; the beginning of the show. It was soon found out that the particular building from which the currency notes were showered, housed many of the offices of Enamul Haque. Enamul Haque, the alleged kingpin of the cow smuggling network of Bengal, was arrested by the CBI from Delhi, on November 6, 2020. Until then, nobody assumed what a big empire Enamul had built so that his staff could throw away banknotes worth crores of rupees from the balcony of his office, to evade DRI investigations.

Enamul’s smuggling network has been built on deep-rooted political nexus and administrative patronage of the TMC Government in West Bengal. Photographic evidence depicts the intimate relationship between the Murshidabad district leadership of Trinamool Congress on the one hand, and Enamul and his close relative and business associate, Humayun Kabir, on the other. The latter duo, Enamul and Humayun organised, sponsored and actively participated in the political campaigns of TMC during the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections. Humayun Kabir had been the frontman in most of Enamul’s operations. He had been instrumental in managing Enamul’s mining business overseas and used to hobnob with the TMC ministers and MPs. Several photographs depict Humayun Kabir as a suave businessman who owns a number of petrol pumps, hotels and restaurants in the border areas of Murshidabad. He managed the funds and resources of Enamul to bribe the police, local administration and politicians. He thus rose to be an influential member of the ruling party’s syndicate in Murshidabad and Malda.

Enamul had been a small-time truck cleaner with a local transporter until ten years ago. He built this business empire worth fifteen thousand crore rupees which comprise smuggling, mining and other enterprises extending up to Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. The Trinamool leadership always blessed Enamul. In lieu of this, Enamul also supported Trinamool’s political ventures in Murshidabad and Malda. Enquiries by the CBI and ED have revealed that a portion of this money also reached the top TMC leadership in south Kolkata. For the last ten years, TMC leadership and the cow smuggling network went perfectly hand in hand and in complete synergy. Enamul and his associates used to send money to Kolkata and the South Asian Bank accounts of a very close relative of a powerful TMC politician. Enamul’s proximity to the leadership and the money given as bribe oiled the state administrative machinery so well that the state police assisted in the smooth functioning of his smuggling network.

Enamul was intelligent enough to not just stop at bribing Trinamool’s top leadership; he assumed complete control of the ruling party’s Murshidabad and Malda leadership. The blessings of the top leadership, active support of the administrative machinery and an extremely porous border facilitated the smuggling empire that Enamul had built over a decade.

In March 2018, a Malayali BSF officer was arrested in a railway station from south India with liquid cash worth Rs 47 lakh. In the inquiry that followed, he divulged the name of Enamul Haque and that it is how the name surfaced for the first time, a little more than two years ago. CBI and ED started investigating on this network and they interrogated Enamul for the first time in 2018. A personal notebook of Enamul that was seized during the investigations revealed a chart of names, dates and the exact amount of cash transaction to the concerned leaders. It was soon found out that the racket that operated behind the cow smuggling in West Bengal consisted of BSF officers, West Bengal police officials and the TMC leadership. The unholy nexus was exposed and CBI arrested satish Kumar, a senior BSF Commandant, who was an integral part of Enamul’s smuggling network. Satish Kumar had been deployed in West Bengal for a long time and he enjoyed a tremendous rapport with Enamul and his associates.

CBI has also seized Satish Kumar’s property worth many crores of rupees. The arrest of Satish Kumar also exposed how the TMC leadership facilitated the smuggling network. Time will only say how many TMC leaders will be probed for supporting the billion dollar empire of Enamul Haque, an empire which was built essentially on cow smuggling in West Bengal.