KOLKATA: Sacked Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee Sunday disowned the almost Rs 50-crore cash stash seized from two apartments of his “close associate” Arpita Mukherjee with a dramatic “amar noy, amar noy, amar noy (not mine, not mine, not mine)”.
The denial, coming eight days since his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate, invited an immediate retort from Trinamool Congress, of which he was secretary general until last Thursday. “What took him so long to say this?” party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said. “When he first had the opportunity, why didn’t he say that this was a conspiracy, and the money wasn’t his? At this rate, he might even say he doesn’t know who Partha Chatterjee is. Or maybe that he doesn’t know Arpita Mukherjee"
Around 1.50pm at the ESI Hospital in Joka, Chatterjee had just alighted from an ED vehicle when a reporter asked him about the ownership of the crores that had been seized from Arpita’s flats. “Shomoy elei bujhe jaben (You will know when the time comes),” he said after denying the money was his.
While iterating that he was the victim of a “conspiracy”, he refused to name anyone who might be framing him.
Earlier, expressing his disappointment at being dropped from the state cabinet and suspended from Trinamool, Chatterjee had said the party's move could impact an "independent probe".
On that occasion, spokesperson Ghosh said the onus was on Chatterjee to prove his innocence. “Let him say whatever he has to say in court. Now evidence, photographs, deeds, fingerprints... everything has surfaced. He should have said this the first time.”
Lok Sabha MP Saugata Roy spoke in the same vein. “He is now in ED custody. There is no importance of such statements made during custody,” he said. “His own doing has brought a bad name to the party. We do not want to give any importance to his statements.”
The ED will produce Chatterjee and Arpita in a Kolkata court on Wednesday.
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