Kolkata, Oct 26 (IANS): The Enforcement Directorate (ED), on Saturday announced confiscation of property worth Rs 163.20 crore in the cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

According to a statement issued by the ED on Saturday, the confiscation is in connection with the ongoing investigation in the recruitment of non-teaching staff in Group-C and Group-D categories for different state-run schools in West Bengal.

As per the statement, the properties confiscated by the ED officials were in the names of the principal middleman in the case Prasanna Kumar Roy, his wife and a corporate entity linked to Roy.

“ED, Kolkata has provisionally attached hotels/resorts and immovable properties worth Rs 163.20 crore, in the Group ‘C’ & ‘D’ Staff Recruitment Scam by the officials of WBSSC in the State of West Bengal, held in the name of Prasanna Kumar Roy, the main middleman, his wife Kajal Soni Roy and M/s Shree Durga Dealcom Private Limited, a company controlled and operated by Prasanna Kumar Roy. The total attachment/seizure in this case till date stands at Rs. 544.8 crore,” the statement read.

Roy is currently in judicial custody after he was first arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials who started the investigation in the school job case.

The ED and CBI are conducting parallel probes in the school job case which involves irregularities in recruitments of both teaching and non-teaching staff.

Forensic audits of the different accounts in the names of Roy, his wife and corporate entities linked to Roy were also conducted.

Roy has family connections with the former West Bengal education minister and Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee, who is also in judicial custody at this moment because of his alleged links with the school job case.

By relation Roy is the husband of a niece of Partha Chatterjee, who was originally arrested by the ED officials in July 2022.

Recently, the CBI, too, had shown Chatterjee as arrested in the same case.