Kolkata, July 23 (UNI) Senior West Bengal minister, and Trinamool Congress heavyweight Partha Chatterjee was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday from his South Kolkata residence over his alleged link to the School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam. Chatterjee was the state education minister when the controversial recruitments to the posts of non-teaching and teaching staff of primary and secondary schools were made.
The arrest followed a marathon 27-hour raid at Chatterjee’s house in the Naktala area, during which the minister could not provide satisfactory replies to the posers, including those related to the recovery of the huge amount of cash from the flat of a “close associate” Arpita Mukherjee, ED sources said. Mukherjee has also been detained. Chatterjee, the powerful secretary general of the Trinamool Congress and a confidante of chief minister Mamata Banerjee has now been taken to the ESI hospital in Joka for medical tests.
The minister, a five-time legislator who served as leader of the opposition between 2006 and 2011, refused to answer queries from the media as he got down from the car outside the hospital in the city’s southern outskirts. Earlier, after his arrest at around 10 AM, Chatterjee was driven in a convoy, escorted by central forces, for more than an hour, triggering suspense about the ultimate destination. The raids had started on Friday morning at the house of the commerce and industry and parliamentary affairs minister as also the premises of his close associates and relatives in various parts of the state.
On Friday night the ED issued a statement claiming to have recovered approximately Rs 20 crore in cash, suspected to be the “proceeds of the School Service Commission (SSC) scam”, from Mukherjee’s South Kolkata apartment. At least nine ED officials took part in the raid at Chatterjee’s house as part of the central agency’s probe into the money laundering angle of the scam.
