Kolkata, Aug 13 — A single‑judge bench of the Calcutta High Court on Thursday refused to hear a petition filed by absconding stone quarry owner from Birbhum district in West Bengal, Tulu Mondal alias Mohammad Nazibuddin, challenging a “Hulia” (a court‑issued notice or warrant containing a description of a fugitive suspect) issued against him by a district court in Birbhum.
In the “Hulia”, Tulu has been asked to physically appear at the issuing district court in Birbhum by 10 a.m. on August 14. If he fails to appear within the stipulated time, the court will consider him a “proclaimed offender”.
After the Birbhum District Police pasted two copies of the “Hulia”, one in English and another in Bengali, on the wall of Tulu’s house on Thursday morning, his counsel hurriedly approached the single‑judge bench of Justice Kaushik Chanda in the afternoon, challenging the warrant.
However, Justice Chanda declined to hear the matter and pointed out that Tulu had already filed a petition before another single‑judge bench of Justice Sougata Bhattacharya seeking interim protection from coercive police action, including arrest, in the same case.
Accordingly, the fresh petition challenging the warrant issued by the district court was referred to the bench of Justice Bhattacharya.
In such a situation, Tulu is now left with no other option but to physically appear at the district court on Friday or be ready to be declared a “proclaimed offender” by the same court.
Mondal is under the scanner of both the Birbhum District Police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after cash worth Rs 28 crore and 15 kilograms of gold with an estimated market value of around Rs 22 crore were recovered earlier this month from the residence of his close relative, Minar Mondal.
During interrogation, Minar admitted that the cash and gold recovered from his residence belonged to Tulu and that he was only entrusted with the task of keeping them in his possession.
Since Tulu has been absconding since then, the cops brought out a “Hulia” from a district court in Birbhum last week and subsequently issued a red‑corner notice against him.
Tulu, who started his life as a daily wage earner, witnessed a meteoric rise in his fortune during the previous Mamata Banerjee‑led Trinamool Congress regime as a close confidant of the erstwhile district president of Trinamool in Birbhum, Anubrata Mondal.
Anubrata, who earlier spent months behind bars after being arrested first by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and then by the ED in connection with the multi‑crore cattle smuggling scam in West Bengal, is currently with the “rebel but majority” faction in Trinamool led by Ritabrata Banerjee.
Besides the state police, the ED has begun the preparatory process to start a probe against Tulu. The central agency officials are currently collecting information from the Birbhum District Police in the matter.
Tulu Mondal’s name had also come up in the cattle smuggling case in 2022. He was under the ED’s watch at that time, and the central investigators raided his house and office.