Arpita Mukherjee Claims Partha Chatterjee Hid Money In Her Residence; ED Interrogates

Partha Chatterjee, former West Bengal minister is currently in the custody of the Enforcement Directorate in relation to irregularities in the hiring of school teachers. He claimed on Sunday that he has no source of income and that the money found during raids at the residences of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee does not belong to him.

Chatterjee got transported to the ESI Hospital at Joka, close to Kolkata, for a medical examination as mandated by a special court that remanded him in ED custody until August 3. Chatterjee told the media. “The money (recovered) is not mine,” he said. He further added, "I have no income," when questioned about the School Service Commission (SSC) fraud and the 50 crore rupees in cash recovered from Mukherjee's residences in Kolkata.

Arpita Mukherjee SSC Scam

According to ED officers involved with the case, Arpita Mukherjee claimed during her interrogation that Chatterjee and his men hid the money in her residences and that she was never permitted to see those rooms. An anonymous ED official who was informed of the development claimed, "More than six bank accounts with a cumulative sum of around ₹8 crores stashed in them have been traced. Mukherjee was the holder of most of these accounts."

When Partha Chatterjee was questioned about possible conspiracies against him, the former leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) responded:  “You will get to know when the time comes.” The 69-year-old Chatterjee was fired from his position as minister in charge of many departments on Thursday and suspended from all TMC positions. A day later, he complained about the party's choice and claimed he was the victim of a plot.

Mukherjee was also sent to the same hospital on Sunday for a checkup, but she chose not to speak with the media there. The TMC leadership disputed Chatterjee's assertions, claiming that he was to blame for his outcome.

After 27 hours of questioning, Chatterjee, the former TMC state general secretary, was taken into custody on July 23 in relation to the suspected irregularities in the hiring of hundreds of teachers and non-teaching staff members at government schools. The alleged violations occurred in 2018, while Chatterjee served as the state's minister of education from 2014 to 2021.

Sukanta Acharya, Chatterjee's personal secretary, and Arpita Mukherjee, the former minister's close aide from whose apartment more than 21 crores in cash was recovered during a raid on July 23, have also been interrogated in the matter.

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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is looking into the purported anomalies in the hiring of teachers and employees from Groups C and D. ED is investigating the case's financial trail. Although the ED has searched at least a dozen additional properties and recovered documents from three of them, none of them was registered in the names of Mukherjee or Chatterjee.