KOLKATA:Partha Chatterjee, a former state minister, and Arpita Mukherjee, a close associate, were named in the first charge sheet the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed in the massive West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scandal, which detailed their ownership of assets totaling Rs. 103.10 crore.

The charge sheet was presented at a Kolkata special ED court. Cash worth Rs 49.80 crore and gold worth Rs 5.08 crore, as per authorities, were among the assets taken in July from Mukherjee's two homes in Kolkata.

The remaining sum is represented by other immoveable assets such as bank savings, landed property represented by homes and parcels of land, and investments in other businesses. The charge sheet also includes the names of the directors of these businesses, which ED officials concluded were shell firms used to syphon off fraud proceeds.

The first charge sheet, which was submitted on the 58th day after the ED began its inquiry, also made mention of 35 other bank accounts with a combined deposit value of Rs 7.89 crore. The main suspects in the scheme are identified as Chatterjee and Mukherjee. The charge sheet contains 872 pages in total.

An ED official said, "The investigative process is still ongoing, and we are confident that additional research will find more such assets obtained utilising the ill-gotten money of the scheme proceeds."

As the former state education minister, Chatterjee is currently being held by the CBI and is being questioned. According to reports, he has admitted to the investigators that he had no control over the day-to-day operations of the WBSSC and had only signed documents that had been sent to him by the Commission.

CBI sources said, Chatterjee completely blamed the WBSSC staffers during interrogation and said that as a minister, he signed the documents relying solely on the commission's staff. Along with Chatterjee, the CBI is holding Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, the former head of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), and S.P. Sinha, the former chair of the WBSSC screening committee.

The two have each been questioned separately, and shortly the sleuths from the central agency will begin questioning them jointly to prevent contradictions in their answers.

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