ED recovered ₹40 crore cash from Arpita Mukherjee's residence so far
PremiumThe ED sleuths have found a total of ₹40 crore cash from Arpita Mukherjee's premises so far in connection with the teacher recruitment scam.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials have recovered an amount of cash approximately ₹29 crore on Thursday morning after conducting raids at the Belgharia residence of Arpita Mukherjee yesterday, a close aid of West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee. The sleuths have found a total of ₹40 crore cash from her premises so far in connection with the teacher recruitment scam, according to news agency ANI.
After recovering the cash, the ED officials left the Belgharia residence of Mukherjee today morning. The sleuths arrested both Chatterjee and Mukherjee on Tuesday after the agency conducted searches and seized cash from their premises.
The pictures put by the agency on its official Twitter handle showed numerous bundles of Indian rupee in the ₹500 and ₹2000 denomination piled one over the other.
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.
Cash, gold, deed papers were seized from the houses of Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee by the ED sleuths earlier. “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 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.
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.
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.
(With agencies inputs)
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