Following the incident, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari posted purported pictures of Arpita Mukherjee with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on his Twitter handle. In the picture, Mukherjee and Banerjee can bee seen together.
“Guilty by Association" - A legal phenomenon used to describe when an individual is guilty of committing a crime through knowing someone else. Just saying. Yeh toh bas trailer hai, picture abhi baki hai," Adhikari tweeted in Hindi.
Responding to Suvendu Adhikari's indirect charges against the ruling-Trinamool Congress (TMC), party's spokesperson Kunal Ghosh clarified that they do not have any connection with the money recovered from Arpita Mukherjee's residence.
“An individual whose name have surfaced in connection with this are responsible for the explanation. We are trying to figure out that why the party's name is being dragged into this. We will issue a statement at an appropriate time," Kunal Ghosh tweeted.
In addition to this, the ED officials also raided the residence of Partha Chatterjee here and questioned him for over 11 hours in connection with its investigation into the teacher recruitment scam.
The sleuths also carried out simultaneous raids at the residences of former chairman of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, Manik Bhattacharya, as well as the board's interim-president Ratna Chakraborty Bagchi, who is also its secretary. The TMC described the concerted raids as a “ploy" by the BJP government at the Centre to harass political opponents.
"This raid by ED, a day after the spectacular Martyrs’ Day rally that created ripples all over the country, is nothing but an attempt to harass and intimidate leaders of the TMC. “The CBI has already interrogated them (ministers) as part of a court directive and they are cooperating. Now, the ED is being invoked only to discredit them. The money laundering issue is being invented by the BJP," senior TMC leader and minister Firhad Hakim said.
All you need to know about Arpita Mukherjee's connection with TMC
1) The federal probe agency, ED has said that Mukherjee is an close aide of West Bengal Minister Partha Chaterjee.
2) Suvedu Adhikar posted the pictures from 2019 Durga Puja which prove that Mukherjee was also associated with the famous Durga Puja of South Kolkata, that also has links with TMC leader Chatterjee.
3) It is said that Mukherjee was also the face of advertising campaigns for Partha Chatterjee’s Durga Puja committee and has acted for few Bengali films.
