Ex-councillor Susanta nabbed from Puri

Kolkata: Former Kolkata Municipal Corporation councillor Susanta Ghosh, who had fled the city soon after resigning as chairman of Borough XII on May 27, was arrested in Puri on Wednesday on extortion charges.Ghosh, who represented ward 108 (in Kasba) in the civic board dissolved on June 8, was the eighth accused to be arrested in a case of alleged extortion of around Rs 3 crore from hawkers.He became the tenth former councillor of KMC to fall in the police net since the assembly poll results were announced on May 4.Sources said a team from the detective department of Kolkata Police, helped by cops from Odisha, picked up the 56-year-old from a spot near a tea stall in Pipili, in Puri district, around 6.30 pm on Wednesday.“The detective department’s anti-fraud section has taken over the main probe. Ghosh confessed to the crime during interrogation at Pipili PS. He is being brought to Kolkata,” said additional commissioner of police (crime) Kunal Aggarwal.“Between 2022 and 2023, Ghosh and members of a hawker committee extorted hefty sums from Anandapur Road shopkeepers on the pretext of allocating pavement shops to them. Victims were forced to comply under threat,” said Aggarwal.

Seven accused, including key operators Sujit Kumar Chowdhury and Sujit Kumar, are in police custody. Custodial interrogations and raids have led to the seizure of incriminating documents,” said Aggarwal.Ghosh is an accused in multiple FIRs related to extortion, cheating and criminal intimidation.He reportedly disappeared after the first complaint was lodged against him with Anandapur police station on May 27.

Police missed him by a whisker on June 5 when his car was intercepted in Belda, West Midnapore, and his driver arrested. Police sources said Ghosh had alighted from the car seeing cops approach the vehicle and fled.The sources said police investigation uncovered several properties linked to him. He has also been accused of owning many benami assets.Besides being a former borough chairman, Ghosh was the chief election agent of former chief minister Mamata Banerjee when she contested the 2021 assembly elections from Nandigram against BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari.A few years ago, a biker tried to fire at him outside his home in Kasba. Ghosh survived the attempt as the gun malfunctioned. The attacker was arrested.