West Bengal: Rs 27 crore at Belgharia condominium but Arpita Mukherjee had Rs 21,000 maintenance dues

KOLKATA: The notice board at Arpita Mukherjee’s Club Town Heights apartment in Belgharia, from where ED officials took out Rs 27.9 crore cash in eight trunks early on Thursday, showed that she had unpaid maintenance dues of around Rs 21,000.
Enforcement Directorate sleuths, along with eight bank officials, took thirteen hours and used four cash-counting machines to count and seize Rs 27.9 crore cash, six kg gold bars and jewellery worth Rs 4.31 crore.The apartment notice board, however, shows she has her maintenance due of Rs 9,099 for the Block 5 apartment and Rs 11,819 for the Block 2 apartment.

Mukherjee owned two apartments at the complex — barely 4 kilometres from her parental home — one on first floor (1,751 sq ft) of Block 2 and another on eighth floor (1,385 sq ft) of Block 5. Both the flats were purchased in 2017.
Officials said they didn’t find anything suspicious at Flat 2A that has been converted into a paying guest accommodation. But once they broke into Flat 8A and broke open the bedroom lock, cash — neatly stacked in bundles of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 inside sealed envelopes and in plastic and gunny bags — started tumbling out of the cupboard. ED sources said cash stacks were also recovered from a loft atop the attached washroom.
A few years ago, Arpita had a tiff with the residents after she tried to convert the 1,735 sq ft second floor flat into a guest house. Arpita “did not even seek permission” from the society and started the work. When residents came to know about her plan from the masons, they stopped it. Mukherjee, who denied that, stopped visiting the flat regularly. Residents did not see her much after the incident. The maintenance charges are lying unpaid since then.
Mukherjee’s brother-in-law Kalyan Dhar had visited this flat as late as on July 19 when the CBI had already interrogated Chatterjee. CCTV cameras show Mukherjee’s presence here barely 72 hours before her arrest. “The suspected hawala route was a complicated one and every player had a part,” claimed an ED source.
Club Town Heights is home to several senior government officials, bureaucrats, professors and businessmen. While the residents could not recollect when Mukherjee bought the two flats, sleuths suspect that the eighth-floor flat was purchased in 2012 or even before that. “As ED officials switched the lights on, we could see trolley bags kept one after another. Initially, it looked like family members were ready to go out on a holiday,” said Ankit Churaria, secretary of the Club Town Heights Apartment Owners’ Association.