E-Paper
₹50 cr in cash, ₹4.3 cr-worth gold seized by ED from Partha’s aide Arpita
On Thursday, the agency carried out a third raid at another apartment believed to be owned by Partha’s aide Arpita Mukherjee in a posh housing campus at Chinar Park in north Kolkata. ED was yet to disclose the details of the recoveries made from the apartment.
The Enforcement Department (ED) seized of ₹27.9 crore in cash and gold worth ₹4.31 crore after a 19-hour long raid at one of the Kolkata apartments belonging to Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee -- both of whom have been arrested in connection with financial irregularities in teachers’ recruitment. Thursday’s recoveries take the total seizures in two raids since Wednesday to over ₹50 crore, officials said.
On Thursday, the agency carried out a third raid at another apartment believed to be owned by Mukherjee in a posh housing campus at Chinar Park in north Kolkata. ED was yet to disclose the details of the recoveries made from the apartment.
“On Wednesday, when ED officials broke open the door of Mukherjee’s eighth floor flat on tower 5 inside a posh housing campus at Belgharia in the northern fringes of Kolkata, they found bundles of Indian currency notes in denominations of ₹2,000 and ₹500, stacked in multiple wardrobes. Bundles of notes sealed in parcels were kept inside the divan and inside the toilet,” said an ED official, requesting anonymity.
The duo was arrested by the federal agency on July 23 and are in ED custody in connection with the multi-crore recruitment scam that allegedly handed out jobs in government schools in West Bengal for bribes.
In its first raid on July 22, ED seized ₹21.9 crore in cash, gold worth ₹79 lakhs and US dollarsworth ₹54 lakhs from a south Kolkata flat belonging to Mukherjee. Besides, an envelope--labelled “education”-- containing ₹5 lakh cash was also recovered during the raid at Mukherjee’s house. On the same day, another ED raid was conducted at the minister’s house, from where several documents were seized.
The recoveries from the two raids, including gold worth at least ₹5 crore, were sent to ED office in Kolkata, officials said.
The alleged financial irregularities in the case could run up to ₹120 crore or more, ED told a special PMLA court in Kolkata last week. More raids in the case are expected in the coming days, said an ED official.
“Arpita Mukherjee has claimed that the money belongs to Partha Chatterjee and that he and his men used to come to her flats and hoard money. She claimed that she knew money was being stacked but was not aware of the amount as she had no access to the rooms,” said an ED official, requesting anonymity,adding that Partha used Arpita’s flats as an ATM to keep and take the money.
On Friday last week, ED also raided 14 places, including Partha Chatterjee’s house, residence of Parsh Adhikari junior education minister and some top former and present officials of the various boards, committee and commission associated with the state education department.
At least 17 items were seized from Chatterjee’s house, including 13 deeds some of which were linked to Mukherjee. At least one deed, comprising 44 pages and dating back to 2012 suggests that the duo knew each other at least for the last ten years, ED officials said. The list of items found during the July 22 raid at Mukherjee’s south Kolkata flat also included three diaries, 27 mobile phones, documents of more than 2,600 pages in 37 files and folders, bills and cash memos, evidence of two fixed deposits, a photo album of 55 pages, documents related to joint property with Chatterjee and two hard disks, among others.
According to another ED official, who did not wish to be named, Mukherjee has stared to share information about the “chain through which money was collected by touts from job aspirants and how it then went up through the ladder to officials and politicians with each having his specific share.”
Soon after Chatterjee was arrested on July 23, the minister complained of chest pain and was shifted to the state-run SSKM Hospital in Kolkata. ED, however, moved the Calcutta high court in this regard, following which it ordered that Partha be sent to AIIMS-Bhubaneshwar for a medical examination. ED was given Chatterjee’s custody by the court after AIIMS officials said that the minister did not require “immediate hospitalisation”.
The case dates back to April, 2021 when several writ petitions were filed in the Calcutta high court by aspiring candidates alleging that they didn’t get jobs in government schools despite qualifying the exam. As more allegations of corruption in the recruitment process surfaced, the court set up a committee headed by Justice Ranjit Kumar Bag in December 2021 to probe into the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of teachers in government schools. The committee flagged massive violation of rules and regulations.
In Maythis year, the high court, while hearing the writ petitions, ordered a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the alleged financial irregularities. The central agency has so far lodged five FIRs and questioned several persons, including Chatterjee and Adhikari. Later in June, ED filed two FIRs in this connection and started an investigation.
Even though CBI hasn’t named Chatterjee as an accused in its FIRs, his name surfaced in the case for allegedly approving formation of a five-member supervisory committee, which controlled the entire recruitment process.
The Calcutta high court on May 18prima facie noticed and recorded that it was this supervisory committee which was the “root” of the alleged irregularities. Both the central probe agencies have questioned all the members of the committee.
