Mamata Banerjee ‘right’ about punishing whoever is found guilty: Partha Chatterjee

KOLKATA: "Thik bolechhe (What she said was correct)," Bengal cabinet minister Partha Chatterjee said in Kolkata on Tuesday, when asked by reporters for his thoughts on chief minister Mamata Banerjee's comments on Monday: anyone found guilty in the primary school appointments scam should not be spared and, in fact, sentenced to life behind bars.
Wheelchaired out of the Kolkata airport en route to the ED offices in Salt Lake's CGO Complex for interrogation, Chatterjee did not utter a single word more as he climbed into a waiting car. Chatterjee and his "close aide" Arpita Mukherjee were quizzed — separately — multiple times on Tuesday, their first day in custody. They are to remain in custody till August 3. Chatterjee, claimed ED sources, was uncooperative; Mukherjee was more forthcoming with her answers.
Chatterjee faced multiple questions on two aspects of the investigation: first, his alleged "active role" in the "illegal appointment" of teachers; second, the source of funds that allegedly helped him amass property, several of them held jointly with Mukherjee.
Mukherjee was questioned on her source of income. She was asked about the way she acquired properties jointly with Chatterjee and the coded entries in diaries and notebooks recovered from her residence, ED sources claimed. "We placed documents about her 11-year-long association with Chatterjee. While she has told us how she met him, we are still to learn about the provenance of the huge amount of cash recovered from her flat," said an ED source.
The agency sleuths fell back on 17 relevant documents seized from Chatterjee's Naktala residence during the ED raid last Friday. ED officials also produced several important pieces of evidence seized from the Diamond City South apartment of Mukherjee.
Among the documents cited were bunches of documents related to intimation letters to candidates, letters of recommendation from MLAs, bunches of papers related to transfers of candidates and admit cards of candidates, copies of documents related to the revised TET result in 2012 and several deeds of conveyance in Mukherjee's name that were executed in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
The ED has summoned Manik Bhattacharya, the TMC MLA from Palashipara, who's also a former president of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, on Wednesday. It is likely that he would be brought face-to-face with both Chatterjee and Mukherjee, according to sources.
The CGO Complex resembled a fortress, with central force guards manning the gates not letting in anyone except those who work there. The Bidhannagar Police set up barricades, and the media was asked to wait opposite the main gate.
The day started very early for the minister at Bhubaneswar AIIMS. He was asked to wake up at 3am to board a flight from Bhubaneswar to Kolkata, scheduled for 5.20am. Tired after the events of Monday — spent journeying to the Odisha capital, where he was subject to a battery of tests, after which he had to virtually join in on court proceedings — he managed some sleep, foregoing dinner, even as the ED officials were waiting for the court order to reach them till around 10.40pm, 20 minutes since the last flight to Kolkata had departed. He was wheeled out of the hospital's back gate at 4.30am to shield him from the waiting media.
Chatterjee was escorted to the Bhubaneswar airport, around 10km away, in an ED car with an Odisha Police escort. The retinue reached the airport at 4.54am, and after a 10-minute wait in the car for a wheelchair — which Chatterjee demanded — entered the airport at 5.05am. After a quick security check, Chatterjee was among the last few passengers on the flight to Kolkata that landed at Kolkata around 6.40am.
Tusharkanti Patra, the doctor who accompanied Chatterjee to Bhubaneshwar and back, said he had been prescribed 15 pills for various pre-existing ailments. "The only discomfort he has now is fatigue because of the long and strenuous journey," Patra said. Chatterjee's lawyer Anindya Routh, who travelled on a separate flight, said all medicines had been handed over to ED officials.