KOLKATA: Arpita Mukherjee, who has been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the West Bengal school jobs scam, has told the central agency that Minister Partha Chatterjee used her house and other properties as a mini bank for stashing money and confidential documents. According to media reports, citing ED sources, Arpita Mukherjee claimed that the TMC minister used to stash money in one room of her house where only he and a few selected people can enter. Arpita, a close aide of Partha, reportedly told the central agency that the TMC leader used to visit her home every week or every 10 days.
“Partha used my house and that of another woman as a mini-bank. That other woman is also his close friend,” Arpita Mukherjee said.
Interestingly, the ED officials have found coded entries in a black executive diary and one pocket diary recovered from Arpita Mukherjee`s residence, which they think might give important clues to the money trail in the WBSSC scam.
The ED sources said that both these diaries have several coded entries, which they believe pertain to the sources of the proceeds collected from the multi-crore West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scam. Teachers were recruited against payments of massive sums of money. Some entries, as doubted by the ED sleuths, might be related to making payments to certain individuals to ensure the smooth running of the scam process.
Sources further said that they are taking the help of the decoding experts to decipher these entries. “Our target is to get these entries decoded before August 3 that is till the time Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee will be in our custody in the current phase so that we can grill them with more specific questions,” said an ED official.
However, ED sources said that handwriting of certain coded entries does not match that of Partha Chatterjee or Arpita Mukherjee, which deepens doubts about the involvement of any third person in this game.
From the mobile phones of Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee, the ED sleuths have noticed that regular calls used to be made from a particular number. “For the sake of investigation, we are not able to disclose the details of the number right now. But the conversations with this number might give us some important leads,” the ED official said, according to IANS.
Meanwhile, despite time-to-time grilling, the ED officials are maintaining a strict diet schedule for Chatterjee, currently the state commerce industries minister, in view of his chronic ailments like high blood pressure and high blood sugar.
On Tuesday, Chatterjee was even refused rice as demanded by him and instead offered chapati and cooked vegetables of low calories. He is also given regular medicines as prescribed by AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, where he was taken for a medical check-up. Even the ED sleuths have got him a special mattress at the makeshift lockup at one of the conference rooms in the agency`s office at CGO Complex at Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.
The agency also issued summons to Manik Bhattacharya, TMC MLA and former president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), for questioning in connection with the alleged irregularities in SSC recruitments. Bhattacharya was questioned on Wednesday.
Partha Chatterjee was on Tuesday morning brought to Kolkata from Odisha after a go-ahead from AIIMS Bhubaneswar on Monday. Chatterjee was taken straightaway to the ED office at the CGO complex in Kolkata, where he was questioned.
Meanwhile, amid growing opposition demands for the industry minister’s removal from the state cabinet, Chatterjee’s official car, used by him for over 15 years, was on Tuesday deposited in the West Bengal Assembly.
