Kolkata Jul 28 :- The ED has seized a cash stash of about Rs 28 crore and 5kg gold and silver in a raid on a flat owned by Arpita Mukherjee, Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee’s “close aide”, in Belgharia on the northern fringes of Kolkata, four days since they recovered Rs 21.9 crore and other valuables from her Tollygunge flat.
The 11-hour raid at the Belgharia flat ended at 5:30 on Thursday morning. Apart from cash and gold, some property documents were also recovered during the raid. ED officials took away the items seizued during raid in 10 iron chests.
ED officials, speaking of the previous seizure from Mukherjee’s flat, had said valuables had been coming out from her flat like treasure from “Ali Baba’s iron chest”. On Wednesday, they brought four big cash-counting machines from the State Bank of India to the flat to count the fresh stash that they described as “proceeds of crime”. At the time of filing this report, counting was still on, several hours since it had started.
Wads of currency notes of 2,000- and 500-rupee denominations tumbled out of wardrobes and cupboards of the flat on the eighth floor of Club Town apartments after ED officials broke open the main lock with the help of a keymaker in presence of the housing association’s secretary at noon. Locals said Mukherjee had last come to the flat three days ahead of her arrest.
ED teams fanned out to four different addresses on Wednesday, like they had done last Friday, based on leads they got from questioning Chatterjee and Mukherjee.
Earlier in the day, ED officers had also gone to Mukherjee’s ancestral home in Belgharia. Her mother Minati Mukherjee initially stood in the way of the ED officials, but had to later allow them to conduct raids.
While raids were on, ED officers questioned former West Bengal Board of Primary Education chairman and MLA Manik Bhattacharya for over 14 hours over the four compact discs recovered from Bhattacharya’s Jadavpur residence. The discs included the 269 names for recruitment in state-run primary schools. The officers tallied the information in the disc with the recruitment list of TET, 2012, seized from minister Chatterjee’s Naktala residence.
Download The Earth News App
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.espalearn.theearthnews
