A week after being arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the alleged teacher recruitment scam, former Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Partha Chatterjee claimed on Sunday that he had no source of income and the sum of ₹50 crore seized in cash from the Kolkata properties of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee did not belong to him.

Chatterjee made the statements before journalists when he was taken to a hospital at Joka near Kolkata for a periodic checkup ordered by a special court that remanded him in the ED’s custody till August 3.

Asked whether he owned the money that was seized, Chatterjee said: “Not mine, not mine, not mine…..I have no income.”

Mukherjee, according to ED officials, claimed just the opposite during interrogation, saying Chatterjee and his men stashed the cash in her apartments and she was never allowed to enter those rooms.

ED officials said they have traced more than six bank accounts in which a cumulative sum of around ₹8 crore were found. Mukherjee was the holder of most of the accounts, an ED official aware of the development said.

Mukherjee was also taken to the same hospital for a checkup but she remained calm on Sunday.

“You will know when the time comes,” Chatterjee said when he was asked to identify those he suspects to be conspiring against him.

ED officials were also trying to trace the bank accounts of two of the companies against which the properties raided so far are registered.

Mukherjee, the probe revealed, was allotted two Goods and Services Tax (GST) account numbers for running her businesses.

Although the ED has so far raided three apartments that Mukherjee used and seized documents related to at least a dozen more properties, none were registered in the name of either Mukherjee or Chatterjee.

The two apartments at Belgharia and the four apartments at the Haridevpur condominium are registered in the names of two companies of which Mukherjee and her brother-in-law, Kalyan Dhar, are recorded as directors.

Of the two companies, Sentry Engineering Private Ltd was registered on January 16, 2001, ten years before the TMC came to power. The other one, Echhay Entertainment Private Ltd, was registered on October 29, 2014.

Mukherjee also owned four nail art studios in Kolkata and its outskirts, the ED found after questioning her driver and people who knew her.

Reacting to Chatterjee’s claim that he never owned any money, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said, “If that is true then why was he silent when he was arrested or, during the next couple of days? Tomorrow, he may say he does not know Mukherjee or claim that he is not sure about his own identity. He should reveal everything before the court.”