WB SSC scam: 'Tell ED who OWNS the money, why suffer in jail,’ Mithun Chakraborty urges Partha Chatterjee

Actor-politician Mithun Chakraborty has urged arrested West Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee not to suffer unnecessarily by keeping mum and reveal the names of those involved in the WB SSC teacher recruitment scam.

KOLKATA: Actor-politician Mithun Chakraborty has urged arrested West Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee to reveal the names of those involved in the WB SSC teacher recruitment scam and who owns the huge amount of cash and valuables recovered by the Enforcement Directorate following raids at the residences of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee. Urging Partha to spill the beans, the Bollywood veteran said that he did not believe that Partha owned all the money. The BJP leader claimed that the money belongs to someone else and Partha is just the custodian.

He even advised the senior TMC leader not to suffer unnecessarily by keeping mum. It may be recalled that Enforcement Directorate (ED) has recovered Rs 27.9 crore in cash, besides a huge amount of gold jewellery from an apartment linked to Arpita Mukherjee, considered a close associate of arrested West Bengal Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee.

The stacks of cash were recovered from the apartment in Belgharia on Wednesday, and after overnight counting, it amounted to Rs 27.90 crore, they said.

The investigators are still ascertaining the value of the gold jewellery, believed to be in kgs, they added. The money and gold were found five days after the agency seized more than Rs 21 crore in cash, besides jewellery and foreign exchange from another flat of Mukherjee in south Kolkata's Tollygunge area, following which she was arrested.

In all, nearly Rs 50 crore in cash has been seized so far, officials said. ED officials on Wednesday conducted coordinated raids at various properties at Rajdanga in south Kolkata and Belgharia in the northern fringes of the city.

During questioning, Mukherjee informed the ED about those properties, officials said. ED sleuths had to break open a door to get into the two flats in Belgharia's Rathtala locality as the keys to open them could not be spotted, they said. Several "vital" documents were also found in the flats during a search, the official said.

Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress leadership is under immense pressure from within the party to relieve Partha Chatterjee of his ministerial and party posts with immediate effect.

"Partha Chatterjee should be removed from ministry and all-party posts immediately. He should be expelled. If this statement is considered wrong, party has every right to remove me from all posts. I shall continue as a soldier of AITCofficial," Trinamool Congress state general secretary and party spokesman, Kunal Ghosh said in a tweet.

Without naming the Minister, youth Trinamool Congress leader Debangshu Bhattacharya said in a social media post that "it is better to puncture that boil to give the body a relief". Partha Chatterjee was arrested by the ED on July 23 morning in connection with its investigation into the alleged teacher recruitment scam.

Meanwhile, Mithun warned the Bengal government on Wednesday saying that over three dozen Bengal MLAs from the Trinamool Congress are in contact with the BJP and that a Maharashtra-like situation could happen in the state any day.