Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Saturday said West Bengal minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee’s arrest in the alleged recruitment scam is “evidence of the fact how people’s money is being sacrificed for corruption in Bengal.” Speaking to reporters, Scindia said he is confident that people will get to know about the corruption.
Chatterjee was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) earlier in the day after being questioned for around 26 hours in connection with an alleged scam in the recruitment of teachers in state-run schools. The minister will be produced in court later in the day. The interrogation by the ED had begun at 8am on Friday.
Besides Chatterjee, agency officers had raided the residences of Paresh Adhikari and several others. Officers said cash worth more than ₹20 crore was seized from the premises of Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of Chatterjee.
According to the ED, the seized cash was suspected to be the proceeds of money laundering in the recruitment of the School Service Commission. The search team took assistance from bank officials for the counting of cash through cash counting machines. Besides cash, several other incriminating documents, records, details of dubious companies, electronic devices, foreign currency, and gold have been recovered from the residences of people linked to the scam.
Along with this, over 20 mobile phones have been recovered from Mukherjee’s residence. The reason behind this is being investigated.
Chatterjee was the state education minister when the scam took place. The ED has been probing the money laundering aspect based on an FIR by the Central Bureau Of Investigation (CBI) that was filed following orders of the Calcutta high court to investigate the alleged scam in the recruitment of groups ‘C’ and ‘D’ staff, assistant teachers of classes 11 and 12 and primary teachers.