Sujay Krishna Bhadra, aka Kalighater Kaku, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) Tuesday night, following 12-hour marathon interrogation, was taken to ESI Joka for medical tests and then presented at ED Special court, Bankshall on Wednesday.

He was later remanded to 14 days ED custody on the same day. The ED is probing the alleged multi-crore teachers’ recruitment scam. Sources said that in the initial stage of the interrogation, Bhadra first tried to mislead the interrogating officers by making contradictory statements.

However, at a later stage of the interrogation, when the central agency started contradicting his statements after presenting specific documents, he started misbehaving with the interrogating officers. In fact, claimed ED counsel in court that Bhadra wielded so much clout that he used to dictate terms on selection of aspirants on who would get the jobs and would recommend that to MLA and WBSSC boss Manik Bhattacharya.

The claim was based on the alleged mobile chat with the latter. Sources said that Bhadra constantly avoided and dodged questions pertaining to his links with three corporate entities which the central agency suspects to be shell companies used in diversion of the proceeds of crime. On 20 May, the ED had conducted raids at Bhadra’s residence in Behala.

The raids were carried out on the same day when the CBI had questioned Trinamul’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in connection with the case. Earlier, the CBI had also raided Bhadra’s residence during which they had seized some documents and cash.

The ED has accessed certain clues from the two mobile phones of Bhadra that were seized. Bhadra’s name had surfaced after Gopal Dalpati, a suspect in the case, named him during the central agency’s interrogation.

Dalpati had told that an accused in the recruitment case and expelled youth Trinamul Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh used to hand over a portion of the scam proceeds collected by him to Bhadra, whom Ghosh used to address as ‘Kalighater Kaku’ (uncle of Kalighat).

As per Dalpati’s versions, Ghosh claimed that Bhadra was his main link with the top leadership of the state’s ruling party