Kolkata: Arpita Mukherjee, a close associate of former education minister Partha Chatterjee, who was arrested in the SSC jobs-for-cash scam by ED, was released on bail by the special PMLA court on Monday. Mukherjee, who was in custody for 857 days, has served one-third of the sentence she is liable to under the PMLA section she is charged with. The development comes on the heels of the Supreme Court's direction to grant bail to undertrials, especially women, who had been incarcerated for one-third of the maximum punishment prescribed.
Mukherjee's lawyer, Niladri Bhattacharya, who cited the recent SC order, said: "The judge has passed necessary orders and has released her on bail on furnishing a bond of Rs 5 lakh with adequate sureties.IPL 2025 mega auctionIPL Auction 2025: Who went where and for how muchVaibhav Suryavanshi, 13, becomes IPL's youngest crorepatiIPL Auction Live: Will Shaw, Rahane find buyers as auction enters final phase?She will not leave the jurisdiction of Kolkata Police without the court's leave."
Mukherjee was on parole to perform the last rites of her mother.
SC last week directed jail superintendents across the country to identify undertrial prisoners, especially women, who had undergone incarceration for either one-third or half of the maximum punishment prescribed for offences of which they were accused. Under BNS Section 479, it ordered the superintendents to send their cases to courts concerned for the grant of bail.
In a four-hour-long argument in the court of special PMLA judge Suvendu Saha, ED opposed Mukherjee's bail prayer. "She can destroy evidence if out on bail," the agency's lawyer Phiroze Edulji said.
Bhattacharya argued that ED had completed the investigation and the prosecution complaint or chargesheet was filed on Sept 19, 2022. He also pointed out that both Manik Bhattacharya and Kuntal Ghosh, accused in the same case, were out on bail.
In his order, the judge noted that Mukherjee had been detained in jail for more than two years and four months and was "entitled to be released being the first-time offender having completed her detention for one-third of the maximum period of imprisonment specified for section 4 of PMLA, 2002."
Soham Banerjee, another lawyer for Mukherjee, said since her parole was to expire on Tuesday, she was at her mother's residence at Belgharia. "We will procure the release order from the court and she will have to visit the jail once on Tuesday to sign her release documents," Banerjee said.