₹28 cr cash, 5 kg gold found at Arpita Mukherjee's house after ED's 18-hr raid

Another ₹28 crore worth of cash, in addition to 5kg of gold, was recovered from the Belghoria flat of Arpita Mukherjee in North 24-Parganas, West Bengal after the latest raids conducted by Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in connection to the multicore teacher recruitment scam. The counting went on until 4am on Thursday morning. The total cash recovered from her premises now amounts to about ₹50 crore, the agency said.

The ED officials raided the Belghoria flat of Arpita Mukherjee for 18 hours on Wednesday, till this morning.

Two flats in Belghoria were raided earlier on Wednesday after interrogating her. Money and gold amounting to approximately ₹22 crore were found in one. Reports said Arpita Mukherjee claimed that Partha Chatterjee used her house as a "mini bank".

Photos shared by news agency ANI showed ED officials load the truck with at least 10 trunks filled with cash and jewellery recovered from the residence of Mukherjee, who is a close aide of Trinamool Congress leader and Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee, who was arrested by ED in the multicrore money laundering case.

Partha Chatterjee was arrested in connection with the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of hundreds of teachers and non-teaching staff in government schools. While the Central Bureau of Investigation is already probing the case on the orders of the Calcutta high court, ED in June lodged two first information reports to unearth the money trail that was allegedly involved in the multi-crore scam.

ED on Friday seized ₹21.9 crore cash, gold worth more than ₹70 lakh and USD worth more than ₹50 lakh from a flat that belonged to Arpita Mukherjee, a model-turned-close aide of the minister, who was subsequently arrested by the agency. The ED had told the court that the huge amount of cash seized from the house of Arpita Mukherjee was the proceeds of the recruitment scam.