India's financial-crime investigation agency probing the West Bengal state-run school recruitment scams involving multi-crore of rupees has found that Partha Chatterjee, the minister in question, owned an air-conditioned apartment exclusively for his four pet dogs.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) sleuths found it while segregating the huge properties and assets that have direct and indirect links with the former education minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) secretary general, reports Zee News.
Currently, the directorate is trying to segregate such properties and assets into three categories -- properties directly owned by Chatterjee, properties owned by him jointly with his close confidants, or aides like Arpita Mukherjee and properties that he gifted to his aides.
While doing this segregation, the ED sleuths were quite amazed to come across a luxurious flat owned by Chatterjee, currently the state commerce and industries minister, which is dedicated to housing his four pet dogs.
Incidentally, this accommodation is the same posh Diamond City Complex at Tollygunge in South Kolkata that houses the residence of his close aide, Arpita Mukherjee, from where the ED recovered huge treasures in forms of Indian and foreign currencies, gold ornaments, sale deeds of multiple flat and other expensive items.
"As per our estimates, the pet- dedicated accommodation, which is centrally air conditioned, will fetch an estimated market value of over Rs 1 crore. As per the documents available with us, the accommodation of Arpita in the same complex, where huge cash was recovered, was also gifted to her by Chatterjee. Apart from that there are two other flats in the same complex, one of which is owned directly by the minister and the other jointly with Arpita. It seems that Diamond City complex was the epicenter of the illegal transaction associated with the scam," confirmed an ED official.
Apart from that, sources said that the agency sleuths have across a number of residences at Bolpur-Santiniketan in Birbhum district, Jangipara in Hooghly district, Domjur in Howrah district and Joka in South 24 Parganas district, which are directly owned by Chatterjee or jointly owned with his close aides or gifted to close aides.
"We are having sleepless nights in category-wise segregation of these properties as well as to evaluate its estimated market value," he said.
Also, the ED has come across an under-construction international- category school at Pingla under Kharagpur- subdivision in West Midnapore district, which is named after the minister`s deceased wife, Babli Chatterjee. As per the documents available with ED, the value of land alone on which the school is constructed is Rs 45 crore, the payment for which was made at a time, when Chatterjee was the education minister.
He was arrested on Saturday after around 26 hours of grilling over the scam.
Chatterjee is accused of appointing hundreds of teachers and non-teaching staff for money and other forms of bribes, putting them in positions they were not qualified for or had they paid acquire.
This came after about 200 million rupees was seized cash from the house of actor-cum-model Arpita.
The state’s ruling TMC then described the action as a "ploy" by the federal BJP government to "harass" its political opponents.
