Arpita Mukherjee, broke down on Friday while she was being taken into ESI Hospital-Joka for a medical check-up, according to visuals aired by news television with Enforcement Directorate officials claiming that the close aide of arrested former minister Partha Chatterjee believes she was being framed.
Initially, she refused to get off the car. "She sat in the back seat of the car and started crying. Finally she had to be dragged from the car by force. Then she tried to sit on the street. Then, she was forcibly taken to the hospital in a wheelchair," said an official of the ED who was present
ED sources also said that at her Tollygunge apartment she had alleged that she was being framed."All this is a BJP ploy," an official quoted her as saying.
Chatterjee was also brought to the ESI Hospital in Joka on Friday. while he was being wheeled in, he answered a journalist's question after bringing down his mask from his face. "I am a victim of a conspiracy," he said but did not elaborate.
Sources in the Enforcement Directorate, which is probing the money trail of the school jobs scam, said the agency was now looking out for as many as four luxury cars apparently belonging to Arpita.
They also revealed that ED raided yet another apartment linked to Arpita Mukherjee in the city's Chinar Park area after recovering around Rs 28 crore cash from another flat belonging to her.
The raid was conducted late on Thursday evening, an ED official said. As the door of the flat was locked and the keys could not be traced, the ED sleuths broke it open in the presence of central force officers.
"This (Chinar Park) apartment belongs to Arpita Mukherjee and we suspect that like her other flats cash may be stacked here as well," the ED official said. "We are talking to neighbours and trying to find out what kind of activities were carried out here," he added, reports PTI.
The details of the Chinar Park flat were provided by Mukherjee during her interrogation by the ED earlier in the day.
In the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday ED sleuths had raided a flat belonging to Mukherjee in the Belgharia area of the city and recovered around Rs 28 crore unaccounted for cash besides large quantities of gold and silver.
The central agency had seized over Rs 21 crore cash from another flat belonging to Mukherjee in the Tollygunj area. The value of the gold jewellery, believed to weigh several kilograms, is still being ascertained.
CBI as directed by Calcutta High Court is probing the alleged irregularities committed in the recruitment of Group C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools on the recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission.
Chatterjee, who was the education minister when the alleged irregularities took place, was arrested on July 23. He was stripped of all his cabinet portfolios and suspended from the ruling Trinamool Congress on Thursday.