Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday submitted a 172-page chargesheet in the SSC teachers’ recruitment scam before the PMLA court at the Bankshall court.
The central agency has so far attached properties worth Rs 103.10 crore following raids and searches at the premises of suspended TMC leader and former minister Partha Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita Mukherjee. The amount includes immovable properties and jewellery and the piles of cash recovered from Arpita’s house.
According to ED counsel Abhijit Bhadra, the documents attached with the chargesheet is 14000 pages.
“The chargesheet has 43 witnesses in the case. There is also mention of eight entities including Chatterjee and Arpita and six others having companies that were floated and are associated with this case,” said Bhadra.
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It may be noted that the first chargesheet submitted by the ED comes 58 days after the arrest of Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita on July 23.
The ED so far has attached 35 bank accounts having a balance of Rs. 7.89 crore. The agency has so far come across more than 100 bank accounts and the sleuths are examining the remaining bank accounts.
It may be recalled that the ED had earlier seized cash worth a total of Rs 49.80 crore and jewellery worth more than Rs 5.08 crore from two premises of Arpita Mukherjee. The immovable properties including flats, a farmhouse and prime land in the city valued Rs 40.33 crore are also attached.
The central agency also submitted that the companies in the name of Arpita were actually ‘controlled’ by Chatterjee.
Meanwhile, in connection to the same scam, the CBI on Monday arrested the vice chancellor of the North Bengal University and former chairman of SSC Subiresh Bhattacharya.
According to CBI sources, Bhattacharya was arrested after the central sleuths found Bhattacharya ‘non-cooperative’.
Bhattacharya had however earlier claimed that there had been ‘no corruption’ during his regime and there might have been any ‘technical error’.
However, Bhattacharya’s name was mentioned in the report submitted by retired justice Ranjit Kumar Bag while the Bag Commission was probing the recruitment scam.
