Kolkata, Sep 6 (IANS): A team of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials, on Friday, reached the residence of Ramkrishna Das, the father-in-law of Sandip Ghosh, former and controversial principal of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in connection with the investigation of financial irregularities at the hospital.

The team of central agency officials reached the residence of Das at Chandannagar in Hooghly district at around noon. However, no one was at the residence and the local people informed the central agency officials that the house remained closed most of the time as the residents only visit the house during festivals.

The ED officials, thereafter, went to the adjacent Baidyabati area in the same district and reached the residence of another individual, Kunal Roy, and started conducting raid and search operations there.

At the time the report was filed, it was not known what exactly was the connection of Roy with the said financial irregularities case.

Three other teams of ED are conducting parallel raid and search operations at four places, including Ghosh’s residence at Beliaghata in central Kolkata. Ghosh and three others are currently in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe into the financial irregularities.

The CBI officials are also probing the case of ghastly rape and murder of a woman doctor of R.G. Kar.

The ED raids are being conducted on a day when the Supreme Court has already rejected Ghosh's plea challenging the earlier order by a single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court directing a CBI probe in the R.G. Kar financial irregularities case.

ED has taken suo motu entry in the matter after filing an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) while the CBI probe in both cases is court-directed and court-monitored.

While ordering a CBI probe in the financial irregularities case last month, Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj observed that since the central agency is already probing the rape and murder case, it would be better that the same agency conducts a parallel investigation into the case of financial irregularities at the same hospital.