KOLKATA : West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee and his alleged close aide Arpita Mukherjee were arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after the agency recovered cash of ₹21 crore from the residential premises of the latter. The pictures that the agency put up on their Twitter account immediately went viral for the sheer amount of cash that was recovered.
The pictures showed numerous bundles of Indian rupee in the ₹500 and ₹2000 denomination piled one over the other. Surrounded by big bags full of recovered materials and paper sealed boxes, citizens gawked at the sheer amount of money accumulated.
The ED had told the Calcutta High Court 24 July, that during the raid at Chatterjee’s house and his interrogation which lasted for 27 hours, ‘sufficient evidence’ was found in support of his involvement in the teacher recruitment scam that took place in 2014. ‘Ample evidence’ was also collected which suggests that Arpita Mukherjee was a close aide of Chatterjee.
Cash, gold, deed papers were seized from the houses of Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee by the ED sleuths.
“The items seized from Chatterjee’s house include at least 13 deeds some of which were linked to Mukherjee. At least one deed, comprising 44 pages, which dates back to 2012 suggests that the duo knew each other at least for the last ten years,” said an ED official.
The ED had seized ₹21 crore cash, all in ₹500 and ₹2000 denominations, from Mukherjee’s flat, gold worth more than ₹70 lakhs and USD worth more than ₹50 lakhs. But the list doesn’t end here. The agency seized at least 17 items, reported Hindustan Times.
The Hindustan Times report further stated that there were other items seized by the ED which included a hard disk and a mobile phone.
The agency also seized bunch of papers relating to appointment and transfer of posts and admit cards of candidates, copy of document relating to revised result of TET 2014, a note from the president of the state primary board, copy of chart relating to proposed teachers’ posting and copy of paper relating to committee of higher authority of state school service commission.
The seizure list shows that while the executive diary had 31 written pages in it, there were at least 40 pages on which something were written in the black diary. In the pocket diary 11 pages were written.
Chatterjee was arrested in connection with the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of hundreds of teachers and non-teaching staff in government schools that took place in 2014.
The CBI is already probing into the criminal angle of the case on the orders of the Calcutta high court. They were joined by the ED, who in June lodged two FIRs to unearth the money trail that was allegedly involved in the multi-crore scam.
On Monday, the ED counsel had told the special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Kolkata that while around ₹21 crore has been seized, another ₹100 crore is waiting to be seized, according to the Hindustan Times report.
The agency suspect that transactions worth crores of rupees were made for the appointment of teachers recruited through the SSC and Teacher Eligibility Test.
Partha Chatterjee held the education portfolio in 2014 when the alleged teacher recruitment scam happened. A senior leader pf the ruling Trinamool Congress, Partha was arrested by the ED and granted a two day custody by a local court. Chatterjee claimed he fell ill and was admitted to the state-run SSKM hospital.
However, the ED told Calcutta High Court that Partha Chatterjee was ‘feigning his illness’ and that he was behaving like a ‘don’ within the hospital premises. Based on these allegation, Chatterjee was shifted to AIIMS Bhubaneswar where specialist doctors treated him and ruled out any major ailment.
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