A new Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday heard the bail plea by former education minister and Trinamul Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case and reserved its judgement.
Pointing to the low conviction rate in the money laundering cases, a bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan noted that the trial is yet to commence and, with 183 witnesses to be examined, will take a long time.
The authorities of Presidency Central Correctional Home in South Kolkata have rejected the plea of former West Bengal Education Minister and Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee for a full-time assistant in his cell.
The first team started the raid and search operations at the residence of Sukanta Acharya, the executive assistant of the former education minister Partha Chatterjee at New Barrackpore in North 24-Parganas.
On Thursday, Chatterjee's counsel Selim Rahman made a forceful argument in the court while moving the bail plea on behalf of his client. Even drawing the reference of Bollywood blockbuster movie "Jolly LLB", Rahman also claimed that going for a sit-in demonstration will be the only course left for him and his client.
The agency officials have contacted all the bank authorities concerned and asked for statement details, following which they will be sent for forensic audit.
The most among the two is Sukanta Acharya, a West Bengal Civil Service (Executive Office), who had been the personal assistant to Chatterjee during his tenure as the state education minister, as well as when he was the commerce & industries minister.
The raid yielded Rs 27.90 crore in unaccounted for cash and Rs 4.31 crore in gold, apart from incriminating documents.
The purchase document of the land in 2012 was jointly in the name of Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee, after the construction of the mansion, its mutation was done in 2020 and that certificate was issued only in the name of Mukherjee.
Following Independence, West Bengal was one of the more developed states in India, contributing over 30 percent to the national GDP.
