KMC Ex-Councillor Sushanta Ghosh arrested from Puri, was on run for 3 weeks in extortion case

The multi-state manhunt for absconding Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) ex-councillor Sushanta Ghosh ended dramatically on Wednesday, as a special team of the Kolkata Police tracked him down and arrested him in the coastal town of Puri, Odisha. Ghosh, the high-profile ex-councillor of KMC Ward 108, had been on the run for nearly three weeks following explosive allegations of a massive financial racket. Law enforcement agencies targeted his hideout in Puri after dynamic intelligence logs suggested he was planning to flee deeper into neighbouring states to evade arrest.

The legal troubles for the prominent TMC leader began on May 29, when a local hawkers’ association operating near the EM Bypass-Ruby crossing filed a formal criminal complaint against him at the Anandapur police station. According to the police, Ghosh and his close syndicated associates systematically extorted nearly ₹3 crore from vulnerable street vendors. The racket allegedly demanded hefty bribes ranging between ₹3 lakh and ₹4 lakh from hundreds of local hawkers in exchange for illicit permissions and unauthorized allotments to set up commercial stalls along the lucrative stretch between the Urbana housing complex and the Ruby crossing.

The administrative squeeze on Ghosh intensified earlier this month on June 6, when a police interception unit tracked his luxury escape vehicle near the Bengal-Odisha border in West Midnapore. While the influential politician and his family managed to abandon the vehicle and slip across the border on foot, the police detained and subsequently arrested his personal driver, Sujit Kumar Chowdhury. Intensive interrogations revealed that the driver acted as the physical collection agent for the extortion ring. Following these leads, the police uncovered additional layers of corruption, slapping a fresh secondary FIR against Ghosh for forging official municipal corporation licenses to execute fraudulent stall sales.