The ED has so far seized assets to the tune of Rs 411 crore in the two cases pertaining to the cash-for-school job scam and the ration distribution racket in West Bengal.

Sources said that at Rs 230.60 crore, the value of the assets seized in the cash-for-school-job case is higher than in the PDS case.

The seizures mainly pertain to the personal assets and properties of the former convener of the screening committee of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), Santi Prasad Sinha and arrested middleman Prasanna Roy.

In the PDS case the value of the total assets seized by the ED is around Rs 150 crore.

These assets belong to former West Bengal Food and Supplies Minister, Jyotipriya Mallick and three other arrested accused in the case, namely Shankar Adhya, Bakibur Rahman and Biswajit Das.

In both cases the assets confiscated were largely in the form of land or apartments, some of which were even located outside West Bengal.

Some fixed deposits and savings account deposits have also been confiscated by the ED.

Sources added the confiscated property by the ED included two apartments owned by Jyotipriya Mallick, one of which is in Kolkata and the other in Bolpur-Santiniketan in Birbhum District.

On Friday, the ED had submitted its third supplementary charge sheet at a special court of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in Kolkata in the PDS case, where the central agency mentioned that Rs 350 crore was diverted to Dubai through the hawala route via the foreign exchange entity owned by arrested businessman Biswajit Das.

(This article has been published via a syndicated feed)