Partha stashed jobs scam money at my home, claims Arpita
The ED probing the school job scam in Bengal on Wednesday unearthed another Rs 21 crore in cash and about 3 kg of gold from an apartment owned by Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of senior Bengal Minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee, who is currently in the custody of the Central agency.
The recovery comes three days after the ED seized Rs 22 crore in cash apart from foreign currency and jewellery worth Rs 1.5 crore from Mukherjee’s another apartment at Tollygunge in South Kolkata.
Meanwhile, in a big disclosure to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) as reported by a Hindi portal, Mukherjee allegedly claimed that Partha used her house as a “mini bank” to stash cash.
However, lawyers of Mukherjee are likely to reject the claims of the ED sources in court at the next hearing and slammed the agency for leaking details of their investigation to the media.
“There was so much cash that three giant counting machines and several bank staff had to be rushed in to count the notes,” sources in the ED said.
The Wednesday’s recovery comes against the backdrop of ED telling a special court that the money was sent to some “invisible hand.”
While in Tollygunge apartment seven small machines were used to count the notes, this time three huge machines were carried inside by the ED staff, sources said, adding this time too the amount could run into crores.
The ED on Wednesday conducted simultaneous raids in at least six places — all belonging to Mukherjee and Partha, sources said.
“Important documents too were recovered from various places,” ED sources said. Meanwhile, the agency has already gone on record telling the special court that the cash for job scam collected from thousands of aspirants had gone to some invisible hand.
The ED action came following a High Court order which found massive irregularities in appointment process of thousands of candidates in Group C, D and teachers’ posts. The successful candidates were denied jobs whereas the unsuccessful ones and those who did not appear in the exams were given jobs allegedly in lieu of cash that hovered between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 25 lakh.
The ED was also interrogating TMC MLA Manik Bhattacharya, a former chairman of the primary teachers recruitment council who was removed by the Calcutta High Court. Bhattacharya was being asked questions on the list of 269 candidates earlier sacked by the High Court for getting illegally employed.