Days after raids, Leaps and Bounds lodged Police complaint against Enforcement Directorate over “unknown downloaded files”

Enforcement Directorate had raided the office premises of a company named Leaps and Bounds last Monday in connection with the ongoing probe into teacher recruitment scam. The Chief Operating Officer of the company, Sujay Krishna Bhadra was arrested by the central agency on May 30. Tracking down his alleged dubious transactions, 4 places were raided by ED last Monday in Kolkata and South 24 Paraganas, including the office premises of Leaps and Bounds where raids lasted for close to 18 hours. ED has seized several documents and one hard disk from the premises. 3 days later, one of the employees of the company has lodged police complaint against ED, alleging that the officers “have accessed and downloaded” files on the company computers which have “no connection” with the company, casting aspersions if there could be any consequences due to those “illegally downloaded file”.

According to the ED seizure list, the officers had seized one hard disk during their raids. The complainant, accounts assistant named Chandan Banerjee claimed there were three computers, out of which, hard disk of one of them was seized, while the other two were left behind. “Yesterday i.e. on 24.08.2023, in usual course, we were going through the other two systems whose Hard Disk Drives were not seized by the ED Officers. We were surprised to find …16 numbers of Microsoft Excel files which were downloaded between 00:07 hrs. to 00.11 hrs. on 22.08.2023... It is evident that these files were downloaded by the ED Officers while they had gained access to the said computer system under the pretext of conducting search and seizure…the files that have been downloaded by the ED Officers and stored in our desktop computer system, have no connection with our company…” read the complaint, accessed by NTT

The seizure list of ED, accessed by NTT shows 15 rows listing down items seized. Apart from several documents, including deed papers, bank statements, one mobile phone, multiple SIM cards were also seized. The seizure documents mentions on the 12th row about “OneHard Disk Drive, Seagate-500GB, S. No. 6VVMSEBD, ST-3500414CS, P/N-9GW142-160, Data Code-13232”.

Leaps and Bounds has called it an “illegal conduct” on part of ED and drawn the intervention of the Cyber crime department of Kolkata Police. The complaint doesn’t specify the nature or content of the “downloaded files”.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee earlier this week had slammed ED for not informing the state government of their raids and called their actions guided by “political vendetta”. While speaking at public meeting, she had even questioned as “where is the guarantee that ED during their raids are not planting money, explosives or evidences” to frame someone.

ED hasn’t issued any statement in response to these allegations as yet. But on Wednesday, through a press statement ED had claimed "various incriminating documents and digital evidence were recovered and seized". The agency had also identified "Abhishek Banerjee, MP from TMC is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of M/s Leaps and Bounds Private Limited and was also a director in the company from April 2012 to January 2014”.