Former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee has been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) regarding the teacher recruitment scam. The raids against him that started on Friday continued till Saturday. The ED has also raided the house of one of his close associates and recovered cash worth around Rs 20 crore. Partha Chatterjee is now the Minister of Industries and Commerce; he was the Minister of Education when this alleged scam happened. The CBI has questioned him twice. The first questioning was done on 25 April, and the second time on 18 May. According to the information, on Friday also, the officials questioned him for more than 11 hours regarding the scam.
According to the information, the ED also raided the house of Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of Partha Chatterjee. According to reports, the ED has recovered around Rs 20 crore in cash during this period.
In the pictures that have come out of this action, a huge mountain of Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes is seen. It is being told that some property documents have been found in Arpita Mukherjee's name, which the ED is now investigating further. Apart from Parth and Arpita, the ED has also raided many other places. ED officials also visited the house of another minister Paresh Adhikari in the Cooch Behar district in the northern part of the state and spoke to his family members.
In addition, they simultaneously raided the homes of Shanti Prasad Sinha, former advisor to the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC), and Kalyanmoy Ganguly, former chairman of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, and nine others. The CBI is probing alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Group' C' and 'D' staff and teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools on the recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission on the directions of the High Court.
At the same time, the ED is engaged in investigating alleged money laundering related to this case.