Guwahati: Partha Chatterjee, a leader of the Trinamool Congress and a former minister of education for West Bengal who was taken into custody by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and flown to Bhubaneswar on Monday in an air ambulance after complaining of heart discomfort.
He was seen leaving the SSKM hospital in Kolkata earlier today in a wheelchair before being driven to the airport in an ambulance.
The ED detained Chatterjee in relation to a scheme to recruit teachers at institutions supported and funded by the government.
Hours after the ED remand, Chatterjee reported experiencing heart trouble and asked for “appropriate medical facilities” if ED custody was granted, according to Chatterjee’s lawyer Somnath Mukherjee, who spoke to reporters in Kolkata.
While ED pleaded with the magistrate to send Chatterjee to Command Hospital rather than the government-run SSKM. According to ED, Chatterjee is a senior minister with a long history of service in government hospitals, where he wields considerable power. The judge did order that Chatterjee be transported to SSKM Hospital, though.
The court ordered that the minister appear in person at 4 p.m. on Monday before a special ED court in Kolkata.
Arpita Mukherjee, a colleague of Chatterjee, was also brought by ED before a court, which remanded her to the agency’s custody for a day.
The TMC asserted that it will not intervene politically if any leader is found to have committed a wrongdoing while also calling for a time-bound investigation into the case against Chatterjee.
Investigators from the ED conducted raids at multiple locations around the state on July 22 as part of their investigation into the financial links to recruiting scams.
On July 23, a day after the ED discovered massive amounts of cash worth over Rs 20 crore at Arpita Mukherjee’s home, she was taken into custody.
The purpose and use of a total of more than 20 mobile phones that were found on Arpita Mukherjee’s property, a close associate of Chatterjee, are still being determined, according to the investigation agency.
Along with cash, numerous additional damning documents, records, information about shady businesses, technological gadgets, foreign currency, and gold have also been found at the various locations where the scammers were staying.