Rs 35cr and counting: ED recovers Rs 15cr cash, gold from Arpita Mukherjee's second house

KOLKATA: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials on Wednesday recovered at least Rs 15 crore in cash from another flat owned by Bengal minister Pratha Chatterjee's aide Arpita Mukherjee at Rathtala in Belghoria.

The ED officials had to call in bank officials and five cash counting machines after a huge stack of cash was found in Arpita's Belghoria residence. The counting is still on.

"More than 3 kgs of Gold ornaments and silver coins were also found at the Club Town Heights flat," sources said.


This comes day after ED seized Rs 21.9 crore, apart from unaccounted gold ornaments worth 76 lakh and forex from her Tollygunge flat following which she was arrested.


Both Mukherjee and Chatterjee are currently under ED custody at CGO Complex in Salt Lake following their arrest and the raids at multiple properties in Kolkata began on Wednesday based on the addresses mentioned in the property deeds, which the agency claims were seized from Partha Chatterjee's residence.


On Wednesday, the ED conducted raids at Mukherjee’s Belghoria flat, an office at Rajdanga Main Road and Mukherjee’s ancestral home at Belghoria.

ED officials also raided a first-floor flat belonging to a close aide of Chatterjee and Mukherjee at Ballygunge Place East and called in a locksmith to break open some lockers inside his flat, sources said.

"The officials came to our flat and raided the entire house and rummaged through the cupboards. They asked me if I knew about any money or valuables hidden here to which I told them I have no clue about anything in our house and opened the cupboards and rooms for them to look into. They didn’t find anything here. I myself am surprised at the news of so many properties and cash recovered from my daughter," said Arpita Mukherjee's mother.


She was asked about the way she acquired properties jointly with Chatterjee and coded entries in diaries and notebooks recovered from her residence, ED sources claimed.

“We placed documents about her 11-year-long association with Chatterjee. While she has told us how she met him, we are still to learn about the provenance of the huge amount of cash recovered from her flat,” said an ED source.

The agency sleuths fell back on 17 relevant documents seized from Chatterjee’s Naktala residence during the ED raid last Friday.

ED officials also produced several important pieces of evidence seized from the Diamond City South apartment of Mukherjee.

Among the documents cited were bunches of documents related to intimation letters to candidates, letters of recommendation from MLAs, bunches of papers related to transfers of candidates and admit cards of candidates, copies of documents related to the revised TET result in 2012 and several deeds of conveyance in Mukherjee’s name that were executed in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

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