ED faces Calcutta HC’s ire for submitting incomplete details on Abhishek Banerjee’s assets

ED probing the multi-crore cash for school jobs case in West Bengal faced the ire of the Calcutta High Court on Monday for submitting incomplete details on the assets of Abhishek Banerjee.

Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) probing the multi-crore cash for school jobs case in West Bengal faced the ire of the Calcutta High Court on Monday for submitting incomplete details on the assets and properties of Trinamool Congress’ national General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee.

After ED officials appeared before the single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha, abiding by her direction, the latter questioned as to why the central agency mentioned only about three insurance policies of Banerjee in its report.

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“There is no mention of his bank account details in your report. Is it possible that he has no bank account? It seems that you are also not aware of his exact residential address,” Justice Sinha said.

She also expressed doubts over the property details of a Bengali actor that she had sought from the ED in connection with the case.

To recall, on September 14, the court had directed the ED to furnish the property details of the directors of a company linked to a prime accused in the case, Sujay Krishna Bhadra. Accordingly, the ED submitted a report to her bench on September 21.

Justice Sinha had recently observed that it would not be unfair to describe the school jobs case as the ‘Burj Khalifa’ of corruption.

On September 22. the high court’s single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh had rejected Banerjee’s plea for dismissal of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) filed against him by the ED in connection with the case.

However, the bench had granted him interim protection against any coercive action by the ED just on the basis of the ECIR.

The bench observed that since the preliminary findings in the ECIR were based on the statements of Sujay Krisha Bhadra, another accused in the case, no coercive action can be taken against Banerjee based on it for the time being.