The Enforcement Directorate on Monday filed a chargesheet against former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and his associate Arpita Mukherjee in the alleged teacher recruitment scam of 2019, PTI reported.
The agency filed the chargesheet under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act before a special court in Kolkata. Besides Chatterjee and Mukherjee, six companies that were allegedly formed in connection with the case have been named in the document, the agency’s counsel Abhijit Bhadra said.
The documents attached with the chargesheet run into 146,043 pages, the lawyer said.
The agency filed the chargesheet saying that it has seized over Rs 100 crore in the case.
Earlier in the day, the Enforcement Directorate had attached properties worth Rs 48.22 crore. During searches conducted in July, the central agency had seized Rs 49.80 crore in cash and gold and jewellery valued at over Rs 5.08 crore. This brings the total amount of attached properties to over Rs 103 crore in the case.
The properties attached on Monday comprise 40 immovable properties valued at Rs 40.33 Crore and 35 bank accounts having a balance of Rs 7.89 crore. The assets also include flats, a farmhouse, and a piece of land in Kolkata.
“A number of the attached properties were kept in the name of dummy companies and firms and persons acting as proxy for Partha Chatterjee,” the Enforcement Directorate said in a statement.
The agency had arrested Chatterjee and Mukherjee under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on July 23. On September 16, a Kolkata court sent Chatterjee to the custody of Central Bureau of Investigation till September 21 for his alleged involvement in the irregularities in the recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in government-sponsored and aided schools.
Chatterjee was the state education minister in 2019 when government jobs were allegedly given to candidates in return for money instead of candidates who had qualified in the recruitment process.
On June 15, the Calcutta High Court had directed the CBI to form a Special Investigation Team to look into alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Group C and Group D staff, assistant teachers of Class 9 to Class 12, and primary teachers between 2019 and 2020.
Last week, the CBI also took former president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education Kalyanmoy Ganguly into its custody. The CBI has arrested five persons in the case so far including, former advisory committee chairperson Santi Prasad Sinha and former secretary Ashok Kumar Saha.
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