ED team visits Visva-Bharati, meets varsity officials

A three-member team of the Enforcement Directorate(ED) Thursday visited Visva-Bharati University and meet its officials regarding the investigation to find out whether organised money laundering was the reason behind the August violence in the campus.

A three-member team of the Enforcement Directorate(ED) Thursday visited Visva-Bharati University and meet its officials regarding the investigation to find out whether organised money laundering was the reason behind the August violence in the campus. According to ED sources, the investigating officers met the registrar and other officials of the central university and spoke to them for over one and a half hours.

"Our visit to the university was part of the routine inquiry. We needed some documents. If required our team will meet the officials again," an ED official said. The ED officers, however, neither visited the local police station nor the office of the Birbhum superintendent of police.

The officials of the central university declined to comment. The ED had waded into the Visva-Bharati row last month after it sought copies of the FIRs filed by rival groups over the August 17 violence to probe whether organised money laundering was the reason behind it. The violence had forced the closure of the famed institution started by Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore.

It had sent separate communications to the Birbhum superintendent of police and university authorities seeking copies of the FIRs and other complaints. Trouble had erupted at the Pous Mela fairground on August 17 when thousands of locals collected at the university after its authorities took up fencing work, vandalised construction equipment and tore down the main gate.

Visva-Bharati had demanded CBI inquiry into the violence and deployment of central forces on the campus while blaming a TMC MLA and some local ruling party leaders for it. The university had also said it would remain closed until the perpetrators were brought to book.

TMC on its part had denied any involvement in the violence..