Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials have confiscated some property forms of land plots or residential houses indirectly or jointly held by former West Bengal education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee, who is currently in judicial custody for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case.
Sources said that the confiscated properties were scattered on the southern outskirts of Greater Kolkata, Bolpur-Santiniketan in Birbhum district and Bishnupur in South 24 Parganas district.
The value of the confiscated property, added sources, is worth a few crores of rupees and the investigative officials have tracked the money trail linking the ill-gotten proceeds of the school job case with the funds utilised for the purchase of these properties.
Sources further said that this is not the first time that the investigating officials have confiscated property in the school job case. The materials seized by the central agency officials since the beginning of the investigation include land property, cash, jewellery and precious metals.
These include the ill-gotten proceeds in various stages of school recruitment irregularities like primary, secondary and high secondary teachers in addition to non-teaching staff in Group C and Group D categories.
This week Calcutta High Court’s Justice Amrita Sinha expressed anger over the lackadaisical approach of a section of the ED officials in carrying out the probe process. She also asked the central agency counsels to ask their officers to be more careful in the process of investigation since this is a court-monitored probe.
Justice Sinha also expressed anguish over not much progress in the investigation in the matter which is in relation to the voice-sampling test of one of the prime accused in the case Sujay Krishna Bhadra.