WBSSC scam: Coded entries found in Arpita Mukherjee's diaries; ED looks for clues

Coded entries in a black executive diary and one pocket diary recovered from Arpita Mukherjee's residence, a close aide of West Bengal minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee, might give important clues to the money trail in the WBSSC scam.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) sources said that both these diaries have several coded entries, which they believe pertain to the sources of the proceeds collected from the multi-crore West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scam. Teachers were recruited against payments of massive sums of money. Some entries, as doubted by the ED sleuths, might be related to making payments to certain individuals to ensure smooth running of the scam process.

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Sources further said that they are taking the help of the decoding experts to decipher these entries.

"Our target is to get these entries decoded before August 3 that is till the time Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee will be in our custody in the current phase, so that we can grill them with more specific questions," said an ED official.

However, ED sources said that handwriting of certain coded entries do not match with that of Partha Chatterjee or Arpita Mukherjee, which deepens doubts of involvement of any third person in this game.

From the mobile phones of Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee, the ED sleuths have noticed that regular calls used to be made from a particular number. "For the sake of investigation, we are not able to disclose the details of the number right now. But the conversations with this number might give us some important leads," the ED official said.

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Meanwhile, despite time-to-time grilling, the ED officials are maintaining a strict diet schedule for Chatterjee, currently the state commerce industries minister, in view of his chronic ailments like high blood pressure and high blood sugar.

On Tuesday, Chatterjee was even refused rice as demanded by him and instead offered chapati and cooked vegetables of low calories. He is also given regular medicines as prescribed by AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, where he was taken for medical check-up. Even the ED sleuths have got him a special mattress at the makeshift lockup at one of conference rooms in the agency's office at CGO Complex at Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.