I am not with any party, I have faith in law: Actor-model Arpita Mukherjee

“I am not with any party. I have faith in the law and I believe law will take its own course,” actor-model Arpita Mukherjee said while being escorted by the Enforcement Directorate officials to Bankshall Court from ESI Hospital in Joka after a medical check-up on Sunday. Mukherjee did not speak on how Rs 21.9 crore in cash landed in her home.

Minutes later, she was seen wiping her tears on the way to the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court from the lock-up. Mukherjee was brought to court around 2.35pm and proceedings began half an hour later.

ED officials began the submission claiming Mukherjee to be a “well-wisher and close associate of a gentleman named Partha Chatterjee”. Pleading for her bail, Mukherjee’s lawyer Niladri Bhattacharya said she was not a close associate of Chatterjee, but didn’t utter a word on the source of cash and valuables found in her home.


Metropolitan magistrate Namrata Singh turned down the bail plea and remanded Mukherjee to a day of ED custody. She will be produced before a special PMLA court alongside Chatterjee.

“The investigation is in its nascent stage. The huge amount of cash and valuables recovered is just the first layer of an onion. More money will be recovered. She has a strong connection with 14 property papers found at Chatterjee’s home. We need to question her to find the whereabouts of all such properties that are there in her name,” ED counsel Bhaskar Prasad Banerjee said.




The counsels furnished medical records stating that she was in fine health. They said they feared she may fake illness if allowed bail. Bhattacharya said: “As the recovery is complete and in any case she will have to be produced before the special court on Monday, a day’s detention is not needed. My client has no criminal antecedent.”

ED officials are looking into a host of companies through which Mukherjee has allegedly been siphoning off money. The agency has charged her under sections 3 and 4 of the PMLA. According to ED sources, she is a director in at least three companies.

In 2011, when she was getting regular offers in Oriya films, Mukherjee became director of a company with interest in the manufacture of special purpose machinery. The registered address of the company is the same as her Diamond City South flat.

In the same year, Mukherjee floated another company for wholesale business and became its director. This company has its registered address as her Nawab Abdul Latif Street residence in Belgharia. It is the same premise where her mother stays. The third company, one into the entertainment business, was floated in 2014 and she became a director of that too. Apart from other businesses, the company owns a plush banquet hall in Kasba.

Sleuths are looking into other companies where she may have links. One real estate firm has its registered office address at her Clubtown Heights, BT Road flat.