Kolkata, March 21 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday filed its second supplementary charge sheet in West Bengal’s multi-crore teaching and non-teaching staff recruitment scam, adding the name of expelled youth Trinamool Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh.
Ghosh is currently in judicial custody for his alleged involvement in the scam. In the 104-page second supplementary charge sheet, there are names of 18 witnesses.
In the supplementary charge sheet, sources said, ED sleuths have referred to Rs 2 crore of unaccounted money linked to Ghosh, out of which Rs 1 crore had been in cash and the remaining Rs 1 crore is related to property value owned by Ghosh.
Sources said that the supplementary chargesheet contains details on how Ghosh maintaining a close coordination with former state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and West Bengal Board of Primary Education’s former President and Trinamool Congress legislator Manik Bhattacharya who had played a key role in giving illegal appointments in state-run schools against payments of hefty amounts.
Both Chatterjee, also the former Secretary General of the Trinamool, and Bhattacharya are currently in judicial custody in connection with the multi-crore scam.
Meanwhile source further said that the direct links of Ghosh with both Chatterjee and Bhattacharya had also been established in the statements made to ED by private real estate promoter Ayan Shil who was arrested by the central agency on early Monday in the scam.
“Shil has confessed that it is Ghosh who acted as the medium between him and two ruling party heavyweights,” said an ED source.
The ED filed its first charge sheet in the multi-crore scam in September last year where it named Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita Mukherjee, from whose residence the central agency recovered crores of rupees and gold last July.
Again in December last year, the ED filed its first supplementary charge sheet in the matter naming Bhattacharya, his wife Satarupa Bhattacharya, and son Souvik Bhattacharya. All three of them are currently in judicial custody.
–IANS
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