NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday asked ED to withdraw a look-out circular against Mamata Banerjee‘s nephew and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee and his wife, Rujira, who are being probed in a money laundering case arising out of a coal pilferage scam. The court, however, directed the couple to take the agency’s permission a week before flying out of India.

The order was passed on an application filed by the two, seeking permission to go abroad for medical treatment. Observing that travelling abroad is a matter of right unless a person is going to abscond, the SC sought an explanation from ED on issuing the circular.
Additional solicitor general S V Raju, appearing for the ED, told the Supreme Court Friday that the look-out circular issued against TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee and his wife, Rujira, was not coming in the way of the couple to go abroad as the agency allowed them to do so.

The bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia, however, said that pendency of the circular creates a scenario where someone is stopped and questioned despite the agency letting them fly out of India.
The apex court had in May last year stayed a summon issued to Banerjee and his wife to appear before ED in its Delhi office and had said that the agency can interrogate them at its Kolkata office where the politician also agreed to be quizzed.
Banerjee and his wife later approached the apex court after their plea was dismissed by the Delhi HC. They challenged the summons issued to them for appearance in Delhi in connection with the money laundering probe linked to an alleged coal scam in West Bengal.
The 35-year-old MP represents the Diamond Harbour seat in Lok Sabha and is the national general secretary of the
Trinamool Congress (TMC).
The ED lodged a case under the provisions of the PMLA based on a November 2020 FIR registered by the CBI that alleged a multi-crore coal pilferage scam related to Eastern Coalfields Ltd mines in West Bengal’s Kunustoria and Kajora areas, which are in and around Asansol.