The Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out a search and seizure operation at the residence of Bengal minister Chandranatah Sinha in Birbhum on Friday.
Teams of the central agency probing the money trail of the alleged irregularities in appointments in state-aided schools also carried out similar operations at five locations in the city, including Chetla, Birati and Lake Town.
Sinha, the Trinamul MLA from Bolpur and the minister for micro small and medium enterprises and textiles, was not at home when the ED team turned up at his place around 9am.
Sinha, who was at his ancestral residence in Murarai, around 90km from his Birbhum home, Chandralaya, later reached his house. The search operation continued till late in the evening.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had earlier summoned Sinha for questioning in a separate case related to the alleged cattle smuggling.
Senior ED officials said Sinha’s name surfaced in the school jobs scam while questioning some of the other accused in the school jobs scam case, including Kuntal Ghosh and Prasanna Roy. Both have been arrested.
“Some of the aspirants, who we have questioned, said that Sinha had allegedly referred them to Kuntal (Ghosh) and Prasanna (Roy) for jobs,” said a senior ED official. “We wanted to check if this was true.”
Besides Bolpur, separate ED teams conducted search and seizure operations on some premises in the city that are allegedly beneficiaries of the irregularities in appointments in state-aided schools.
At Chetla’s Peary Mohan Roy Road, a team of ED officials carried out search operations at the house of a person known to run a transport business. The owner was not at home.
“We have collected documents and files,” an ED official said.
Insiders in the agency said they were likely to summon some of those whose documents had been collected during the day’s operation for questioning.
A team of officers would scan the documents to understand the financial statements and prepare a questionnaire to clarify the doubts.