KOLKATA: A day after Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee accused the BJP of misusing central agencies against her party leaders, Enforcement Directorate (ED) sleuths arrived at former education minister and party secretary general Partha Chatterjee’s house in Kolkata on Friday and interrogated him for nearly 10 hours over alleged irregularities in recruitment of teachers in schools through the School Service Commission.
The ED recovered Rs 20 crore from one of the locations, owned by a woman known to Chatterjee. “During the course of searches, the ED recovered Rs 20 crore cash from the residential premises of Arpita Mukherjee. The sum is suspected to be proceeds of SSC scam,” ED stated.
ED teams, comprising 80 personnel, conducted simultaneous raids at 13 locations, including houses of state minister Paresh Adhikari in Cooch Behar and former advisor of SSC’s screening committee Santi Prasad Sinha.
Chatterjee, who is now the commerce and industries minister, has been interrogated by the CBI twice in this case.
While he could not be contacted, Adhikari said, “I am in Kolkata. I heard that ED officials reached my house but I don’t know the details.’’
Besides, they carried out simultaneous raids in the houses of former advisor of the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) Shanti Prasad Sinha, ex-president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education Kalyanmoy Ganguly and nine others, the official said.
The CBI, as directed by the Calcutta High Court, is looking into the alleged irregularities committed in the recruitment of Group-C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools on recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission.
The ED is tracking the money trail in the scam.
"ED is carrying out search operations at various premises linked to recruitment scam in the West Bengal School Service Commission and West Bengal Primary Education Board," the agency said on its official Twitter handle.
The agency shared four photographs of piles of cash in the denomination of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 besides a number of sealed packets inside a room, without disclosing the quantity or the owner of the place.
ED sources, however, said that around Rs 20 crore in cash and more than 15 mobile phones were seized from the residence of a woman, a close associate of Chatterjee, in the city's Tollygunge area following a raid there in the evening, an official said.
It is learnt that she has acted in several Bengali, Odia and Tamil films in recent years.
At least 7-8 ED officials reached the Naktala residence of Chatterjee, the former education minister, at around 8:30 am with a few CRPF personnel keeping guard outside.
They questioned him for more than 11 hours about the alleged scam.
At one point of time, the senior Trinamool Congress leader complained of uneasiness following which a team of doctors from the state-run SSKM Hospital were called by the ED sleuths, a source said.
"An ECG was conducted on the minister and his condition was stable," said the source, who is close to the minister.
During the interrogation, ED officials took away mobile phones of the minister's personal assistant as well as the security guards.
Chatterjee, currently industries and commerce minister, held the education portfolio when the scam was allegedly pulled off.
He was interrogated by the CBI twice earlier, once on April 26 and then on May 18.
Raids were also conducted at the residence of one of Chatterjee's close associates at Pingla in Paschim Medinipur district, an official of the ED said, though he declined to comment whether the raid was in connection with the probe into the same scam or not.
The agency sleuths, who raided Adhikari's residence at Mekhliganj in Cooch Behar district questioned his family members including his daughter Ankita Adhikari in his absence, he stated.
Ankita recently lost her job as an assistant teacher at a government school where she was appointed through the SSC two years ago after it was found "illegal" by the high court.
Adhikari who had also been grilled by the CBI earlier told reporters in Kolkata he could not get in touch with his family over the phone.
"They did not intimate us about the visit to our house today. I am in Kolkata in connection with the July 21 Martyrs' Day rally of the TMC. Had I been around, I would have treated them to muri (puffed rice), he said.
ED sleuths also carried out simultaneous raids at the residences of former chairman of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, Manik Bhattacharya, as well as the board's interim-president Ratna Chakraborty Bagchi, who is also its secretary.
The TMC described the concerted raids as a ploy by the BJP government at the Centre to harass political opponents.
"This raid by ED, a day after the spectacular Martyrs' Day rally that created ripples all over the country, is nothing but an attempt to harass and intimidate leaders of the TMC. The CBI has already interrogated them (ministers) as part of a court directive and they are cooperating. Now, the ED is being invoked only to discredit them. The money laundering issue is being invented by the BJP," senior TMC leader and minister Firhad Hakim said.
The BJP, however, alleged that the TMC aided large-scale anomalies in the recruitment process of teachers at the primary, upper primary and secondary levels since coming to power in the state.
"TMC leaders and people close to them duped lakhs of qualified youths and handed over their jobs to ineligible ones. The CBI and ED are progressing on the right path. More skeletons will tumble out of the cupboard. The BJP has no role to play in the issue," the saffron party's national vice-president, Dilip Ghosh, added.
(With PTI Inputs)