The recent images were astounding. A mountain of hard cash, gold bars, and dollars stacked in a room. And in Bengal. Unheard of. In Maharashtra, money laundering charges against a party ideologue over ‘redevelopment’ of a small chawl. Shocking again. TV images of heaps of currency notes recovered from a close associate of former TMC minister Partha Chatterjee are playing out. The voluble Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, till recently editor of Sena mouthpiece Saamana, who is known for his fluent and fiery editorials, has been charged with money laundering. It seems that the greed for cash has caught up with some members of communities traditionally associated with a disdain for money, namely the Bengali bhadralok and the Maharashtrian educated middle-class. When did hauls of cash and gold—once seen among ‘dabang’ netas elsewhere—start to appear in Bengal of all places?
