SC reserves judgment on Partha Chatterjee's bail plea in Bengal school job scam case

New Delhi (The Uttam Hindu): The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on the bail plea of former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee in connection with the money laundering case linked to the alleged cash-for-school-job scam case. A bench, headed by Justice Surya Kant, reserved its decision after hearing the oral arguments of senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing on Chatterjee’s behalf and Additional Solicitor General (ASG) S.V. Raju, representing the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

Rohtagi contended that the former minister had been under custody for over two years and there was no likelihood of early completion of the trial. The senior counsel added that the other co-accused have been granted bail in connection with the money laundering case. At this, Justice Kant-led Bench said, “You cannot claim parity here. Everybody was not the minister.” It added that proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs 28 crore were recovered from the industrial premises belonging to Chatterjee. When Rohtagi refuted the fact of recovery, saying that the property was not owned by Chatterjee, this drew an uninvited observation from Justice Kant. “On the face of it, you are a corrupt person! What message do you want us to send to society? That corrupt person can get bail like this?" remarked Justice Kant-led Bench.

It added: “After judicial intervention and central agency probe all of this was uncovered. The amount recovered is not something people keep in their residences like this. The only thing we need to examine is if your release will impact the trial or witnesses.” Opposing the bail plea, the ED said that Chatterjee would indulge in influencing witnesses and evidence tampering if released.

In an earlier hearing, the Bench, also comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, hinted at granting relief to Chatterjee and expressed concern over the delay in the commencement of the trial. Questioning the ED as to how long can Chatterjee be kept behind bars, the Justice Kant-led Bench asked, “How long can we keep him behind bars? This is a case where more than 2 years have passed. If ultimately he (Chatterjee) is not convicted, what will happen?"

It also flagged the poor conviction rate in the cases lodged by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). In response, the ED had highlighted that there were serious corruption charges against the former West Bengal minister as jobs were offered to undeserving candidates after receiving bribes.

The federal anti-money laundering agency said that Partha Chatterjee was under custody in connection with the corruption case and if released on bail, he will influence the witnesses to retract their statements. On the other hand, Chatterjee’s lawyer had raised suspicion on the timing of arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) saying that the former minister was arrested after two years of registration of the FIR when his bail petition in the ED case was pending adjudication before the top court.

Thereafter, the apex court had asked ASG Raju to apprise it about the period of custody undergone by Chatterjee in the ED as well as the CBI case. The Supreme Court, on October 1, issued notice to the ED and asked the Central probe agency to file its reply within two weeks. Earlier, the Calcutta High Court had rejected Chatterjee’s bail plea. After being denied bail in the lower court multiple times, Chatterjee approached the high court, contending that he had no connection with the huge amount of cash recovered from the residence of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee, and should be granted bail. The ED had recovered huge quantities of cash and gold from the twin residences of Mukherjee in July 2022, which the latter had claimed were kept there by Chatterjee.

In the course of the investigation, the ED also confiscated some property in the form of land plots or residential houses indirectly or jointly held by the Trinamool Congress leader and his close associates and relatives. Chatterjee was arrested from his residence by the ED in July 2022. Since then, after the initial days of central agency custody, his address had been a cell at Presidency Central Correctional Home in south Kolkata.

Two weeks ago, the Calcutta High Court delivered a split verdict on Chatterjee’s bail plea in the corruption case registered against him by the CBI in the same alleged multi-crore cash-for-school-job scam. While Justice Arijit Bandopadhyay pronounced in favour of bail for Chatterjee and eight others accused in the case, Justice Apurba Sinha Roy rejected the bail for Chatterjee and four others. However, the bail pleas of four persons were allowed both by Justice Bandopadhyay and Justice Sinha Roy. The division bench ordered the matter to be placed before Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam. Thereafter, it was announced that a single-judge Bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty would look into the matter, including the bail plea of Chatterjee.