Mamata Banerjee vs ED: Hawala investigation or TMC data theft? A great battle broke out in the Supreme Court

Supreme Court News : The case of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raid on the premises of political consultancy firm I-PAC and its co-founder Prateek Jain in West Bengal is now at the threshold of the country’s biggest court. Today there was a heated debate on this matter in the Supreme Court. On one hand, West Bengal Police accused ED of using it as a political weapon. At the same time, ED retaliated by saying that the state administration has terrorized it.

The bench of Justice PK Mishra and Justice KV Vishwanathan was hearing this high profile petition. The main allegation of ED is that on January 8, when they reached the IPAC office to investigate the Hawala link in the money laundering case related to coal smuggling, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee herself reached there along with the state DGP and Police Commissioner. The ED claims that this interference hindered their statutory duties.

Questions raised on the intentions of the central agency

During the hearing, Bengal Police lawyer Siddharth Luthra raised questions on the intentions of the central agency. In response to this, Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju said that ED was not scaring anyone, rather the agency itself had come under pressure due to Mamata Banerjee’s arrival with Lav-Lashkar. ED is now demanding to register an FIR against Mamata Banerjee and senior police officers.

Mamta Banerjee rejected the allegations

On the other hand, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has completely rejected these allegations in her counter affidavit. She argues that she had gone there only because she had received information that the ED was accessing sensitive political data of her party (TMC). This data was linked to the strategy for the 2026 assembly elections and the secret list of candidates. The Chief Minister says he politely asked for the data back and ED officials did not object. He alleged that this raid conducted just before the elections was completely malicious.

Also read: Who is IPAC chief Prateek Jain? When ED reached their house, Mamta didi created a ruckus, she also has a connection with PK.

Next hearing postponed till March 18

At present, the Supreme Court has postponed the next hearing of the case to March 18 (after Holi). This legal battle is no longer limited to just investigating corruption, but has taken the form of a major constitutional conflict between privacy and security of election data.