A court in Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district issued an arrest warrant on Monday against Sumit Roy, a close aide of TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, in connection with a land scam case, police said.

The warrant was issued after investigators informed the court that Roy could not be traced despite repeated attempts to locate him.

“Several teams have been trying to trace the accused for the past few days. As he could not be located and was not cooperating with the investigation, we moved court seeking an arrest warrant. The court has allowed our plea,” the officer told PTI.

Roy has meanwhile approached the Calcutta High Court seeking anticipatory bail. His counsel mentioned the matter before the bench of Justice Joy Sengupta, and the plea is likely to come up for hearing later this week.

Police said Roy is being searched in connection with a case registered at the Salboni police station.

Investigators added that his name surfaced during the interrogation of former Medinipur MLA Sujoy Hazra, who was earlier arrested in the same land scam case.

As part of the search operation, a team from Salboni police station, along with central forces, reached Abhishek’s Kalighat residence on Saturday.

Officials said they acted after obtaining Roy’s last known mobile tower location from the area and carried out a search after waiting for several hours.

“Based on technical inputs, searches were carried out at multiple locations. However, the accused was not found,” the senior officer said.

Police also conducted a search at Roy’s in-laws’ residence in Serampore in Hooghly district the same day, but did not find him.