Bengal school job case: Hearing adjourned in SC on Partha Chatterjee’s bail plea

New Delhi, Nov 20 The Supreme Court on Wednesday adjourned hearing on a plea filed by former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee seeking bail in connection with the money laundering case linked to the alleged cash-for-school job scam.

The matter could not be taken up for hearing due to the non-sitting of Justice Surya Kant-led Bench.

As per the computerised case status, no fresh date of listing is shown on the website of the apex court.

On October 1, the top court had issued notice to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and asked the federal anti-money laundering agency to file its reply within two weeks.

In April this year, the Calcutta High Court had rejected Chatterjee’s bail plea. After being denied bail in the lower court multiple times, Chatterjee approached the Calcutta High Court. Chatterjee contended 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 former Education Minister 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.

On Tuesday, the Calcutta High Court delivered a split verdict on Chatterjee’s bail plea in the corruption case registered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (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.

The division bench ordered the matter to be placed before Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, who will now refer the bail pleas before a three-judge bench.

However, the four persons whose bail petitions have been allowed both by Justice Bandopadhyay and Justice Sinha Roy will now be released on bail.