Bengal school job case: ED gets clues on fund diversion by Partha Chatterjee
Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials have got specific evidence about the diversion of ill-gotten proceeds in the cash-for-school job case in West Bengal through a trust named after the deceased wife of the former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee.
The ED has named the said trust, Babli Chatterjee Memorial Trust, in the fifth supplementary charge sheet filed by the central agency at a special court in Kolkata earlier this week, sources said.
In the fresh chargesheet, the ED has also named Partha Chatterjee’s son-in-law Kalyanmoy Bhattacharya, who according to the central agency officials used to operate the financial matters of the trust at the ground -level.
Bhattacharya, who is currently settled abroad, came to Kolkata earlier this year, met the Income Tax officials and informed their departmental officials about the property purchased by the former education minister in Bhattacharya’s name using the latter’s identity proofs like PAN cards.
Then the Income Tax also secured definite evidence that besides Bhattacharya, the former state education minister also purchased huge property in the name of his daughter Sohini Bhattacharya (Chatterjee), who is also settled abroad along with her husband.
In the fresh charge sheet, the ED has included 29 new names of individuals and corporate entities, including a company linked to a prime accused in the case of Sujay Krishna Bhadra.
The other corporate entities named in the charge sheet include those involved in the real estate business, the private education sector and bicycle manufacturing. The name of S. Basu Roy & Company, the outsourced entity responsible for the supply of optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets for the written examinations for school jobs, had also been named in the fresh charge sheet.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on the bail plea of Chatterjee in the school job case. He was arrested by the ED officials in July 2022 and since then he has been in judicial custody.
Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe into the school job case, also showed him as arrested in the matter.
The CBI sleuths on Wednesday collected voice samples of two accused in the case — Santu Gangiopadhya and Santanu Bandopadhya — to match them with the audio clips of their conversations recovered from their mobile phones.
