Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers on Wednesday said they had found at least Rs 20 crore in cash and gold from one of Arpita Mukherjee’s two apartments in Belgharia on the northern fringes of Kolkata.
The raid was part of search and seizure operations across locations in the city and its suburbs, the central investigation agency said. Till late evening, officers did not specify the exact amount of cash that was found and said the counting of notes was on.
ED sources shared pictures of the cash haul. Mukherjee, described by the agency as a close associate of former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee, is in ED custody like the minister, in connection with a probe into alleged irregularities in school recruitments. ED sources said a team of officers found Wednesday’s cash in a cupboard in one of Mukherjee’s two apartments in Block V of Club Town Residency, a housing complex in Rathtala, not too far from her ancestral house in Dewanpara in Belgharia, about 12km north from the heart of Kolkata.
The eighth-floor apartment was under lock and key and ED officers said they had to break it open after failing to locate the keys since noon. The officers said they requested the services of a nationalised bank and their cash counting machines. The counting began at 6.30pm.The officers said Mukherjee had been to this flat three days before her arrest on Saturday.
The central investigation agency had earlier said it had seized Rs 21.9 crore, gold jewellery worth Rs 78 lakhs and foreign exchange from Mukherjee’s Tollygunge apartment. That seizure led to her arrest. Mukherjee owns two apartments in the housing complex in Belgharia, one measuring around 1,100 sq ft and the other about 1,600 sq ft, ED officers said.
Residents of the complex said Mukherjee had not cleared her maintenance charges for the flats since January. Mukherjee had proposed converting one of the two apartments into a guesthouse but could not in the face of opposition from the residents’ association, they said. ED officers also went to her ancestral home in Dewanpara, where her mother stays. The team met with resistance initially before being let into the old building, the officers said.
“They had come in search of some documents. I don’t know what exactly they were looking for while rummaging through my cupboard,” Mukherjee’s mother Minati told a TV channel. “The officers asked me if I was aware of any valuables or cash lying hidden in my house... They did not find anything,” Minati said.
ED officers said a team raided a property in Ballygunge Place East. It was not clear whether they recovered any item from the house, which belongs to a businessman. Another ED team raided the office of Echhay Entertainment Pvt Ltd at 95, Rajdanga Main Road in Kasba. Mukherjee is a joint director in the venture.