Bengal School Recruitment Scandal: ED Discovers Evidence of Fund Misappropriation Linked to Partha Chatterjee
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Kolkata, Dec 5 (NationPress) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials have uncovered specific evidence regarding the misappropriation of illicit funds in the cash-for-school job scandal in West Bengal through a trust named after the late wife of former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee.
The ED has referenced this trust, Babli Chatterjee Memorial Trust, in the fifth supplementary charge sheet submitted by the central agency to a special court in Kolkata earlier this week, according to sources.
In this latest charge sheet, the ED has also implicated Partha Chatterjee’s son-in-law, Kalyanmoy Bhattacharya, who, according to the central agency officials, managed the financial operations of the trust on the ground level.
Bhattacharya, who currently resides abroad, returned to Kolkata earlier this year, met with Income Tax officials, and disclosed to them details of properties acquired by the former education minister in Bhattacharya’s name using his identity proofs such as PAN cards.
Furthermore, the Income Tax department secured concrete evidence that, in addition to Bhattacharya, the former state education minister also acquired significant property in the name of his daughter Sohini Bhattacharya (Chatterjee), who, along with her spouse, also lives abroad.
The new charge sheet includes 29 additional names of individuals and corporate entities, including a company associated with a primary suspect in the case, Sujay Krishna Bhadra.
The charge sheet also names various corporate entities involved in sectors such as real estate, private education, and bicycle manufacturing. Notably, S. Basu Roy & Company, the outsourced entity responsible for supplying optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets for written examinations for school job positions, has been mentioned in the recent charge sheet.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court reserved its ruling on Chatterjee's bail application in the school job scandal. He was apprehended by ED officials in July 2022 and has been in judicial custody since then.
Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a concurrent investigation into the school job case, has also recorded Chatterjee’s arrest in this matter.
On Wednesday, CBI officials collected voice samples from two suspects in the case -- Santu Gangiopadhya and Santanu Bandopadhya -- to compare them with audio clips of their conversations retrieved from their mobile devices.
