Ex-Bengal Minister Indranil Sen Arrested Over Irregularities In Durga Puja Pass Sales

Kolkata Police on Wednesday arrested former West Bengal minister Indranil Sen over financial irregularities in holding Durga Puja preview shows and the sale of passes, with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari claiming his predecessor Mamata Banerjee may have benefitted, and it would be wrong to assume only Sen pocketed the money.

The singer and former tourism and culture minister in the previous TMC government was arrested after hours of grilling by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Kolkata Police into the "financial irregularities" committed by MassArt Society, with which Sen and his wife Madhuchhanda were allegedly associated, in managing Durga Puja 'preview shows'.

Reacting to the development, Adhikari, while addressing a press conference at state secretariat Nabanna, said the arrest followed an investigation by the ED and Kolkata Police, which, he claimed, must have found evidence warranting legal action.

"An investigation has been underway against him for a long time. The ED has been probing the case, and so has the Kolkata Police. They must have found something. But it would be wrong to think that Indranil Sen kept all the money for himself. He may have shared the spoils with Mamata Banerjee. It is not just him; the investigation will reach even bigger names. Just wait and watch," he said.

Adhikari further claimed that Sen was once the CPI(M)'s "blue-eyed boy" and had also been entrusted with the responsibility of an NGO run by the daughter of a former chief minister.

He referred to Sen's links with the Left during the Singur anti-land acquisition movement, saying he and poet Subodh Sarkar had written songs during that period.

After the elections, Sen had allegedly attempted to join the BJP and had also begun praising the government, Adhikari claimed.

"Such people are like water and take the shape of the container," Adhikari said.

"All institutional thieves will have to go to jail," he said, asserting that the law would take its course irrespective of how powerful those under investigation were.

The chief minister alleged that Sen and Banerjee had been close political associates, travelling together in the same car and singing at public events.

"Senior TMC leaders who were with the party since the beginning never had the chance to travel with her in the same car, but Sen had access and used to travel in the same car," he said.

Taking a dig at the former minister's political career, Adhikari sang a line from the song that Banerjee and Sen sang together: "Amar Jawar Samay Holo, Dao Biday" (It is time for me to leave, bid me farewell), saying it was an apt farewell for the former minister.

It is a popular Nazrul Sangeet that became a major point of political debate in West Bengal during this year's assembly elections.

"She and Indranil Sen complemented each other," he said, alleging that the former minister could not have operated alone.

The Mamata All India Trinamool Congress hit back at the BJP over Sen's arrest, with party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee alleging that those who refuse to compromise their conscience are being jailed, while people accused of serious crimes are let off after joining the saffron party.

"Those who fight without selling their conscience are the ones being sent to jail," he told reporters here, adding that "thieves and fraudsters" are forgiven for even the gravest crimes once they take up the BJP flag.

The case centres on alleged financial irregularities in the sale of passes for Durga Puja preview shows and privileged entry to puja pandals through MassArt Society.

Investigators had claimed that money was collected from the public between 2022 and 2025 by selling passes for privileged puja entry while falsely creating the impression that the organisation was directly associated with, or had the approval of, UNESCO. However, UNESCO had never entered into any such commercial agreement.

MassArt Society was set up after Kolkata's Durga Puja received UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage recognition in 2021, according to sources. Madhuchhanda Sen is its president, while Dhrubajyoti Bose is the secretary, Sayantan Mitra the vice-president and Ranjan Chatterjee the treasurer, the ED had said.

The investigation is examining how the money collected through the sale of preview shows and donor passes was utilised and whether funds were transferred to puja committees or diverted for other purposes.

A complaint by Jaideep Mukherjee, a travel agent, at Bowbazar police station led to the registration of an FIR and the subsequent police investigation. The ED initiated a parallel probe into alleged money laundering.

Kolkata Police had been waiting outside the ED office when Sen appeared for questioning on Wednesday. A senior police officer said the former minister had been issued several summonses earlier but had neither responded nor appeared before the agency's officers for months.

Sen had earlier approached the Calcutta High Court seeking anticipatory bail, but his plea was rejected. He subsequently challenged the order in the Supreme Court.

Adhikari also accused Sen of taking money from envelopes meant for artistes and alleged that he had received several lakhs of rupees from the state Information and Cultural Affairs Department through an event management company floated in his wife's name.

"He used to pull out money from envelopes of artistes. Sen had floated an event management company in the name of his wife and taken several lakhs of money from the I&CA Department, and constructed a farmhouse in Singur," he said.

Sen's arrest comes amid heightened scrutiny of alleged corruption cases involving former ministers of the previous TMC government. Former state fire services minister Sujit Bose was arrested on May 11 in a separate municipal recruitment case

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