Teachers’ scam: ED directs salon owner to return Rs 50L taken as loan from Kuntal Ghosh

Kolkata: Soma Chakraborty, the beauty salon owner in Kolkata who purportedly took a loan of Rs 50 lakh from youth Trinamool Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh arrested in connection with the multi-crore teachers’ recruitment scam in West Bengal, will now have to return the money to the government immediately.

Sources said that Chakraborty was on Friday summoned to the ED’s office at central government office (CGO) complex at Salt Lake on the northern outskirts where she was asked to return the amount she took as loan from Ghosh. Sources said that she will have to return the money in the form of a demand draft within the next five days.

Chakraborty’s name surfaced, when the central agency sleuths while examining the bank account details of Ghosh and transactions there traced that an amount of Rs 50 lakh was transferred to her account from that of Ghosh in different phases.

During questioning, Chakraborty told ED officials that she owns two beauty salons, one in south Kolkata and the other in Lake Town area in north Kolkata and she took the amount as loan from Ghosh for the purpose of expansion and infrastructure improvement of those salons.

Sources said that ED officials found an extent of reliability because of her clear-cut submission on this count and then asked her to return that money as it is perceived that the amount she received purportedly as loan was part of the proceeds of the scam collected by Ghosh.

Now the question arises whether the ED will also ask Tollywood actor Bonny Sengupta aka Anupriyo Sengupta, who claimed to have received Rs 40 lakh as loan from Ghosh for purchasing a high-end premium vehicle, to return the money.

Sengupta also claimed that the loan given was adjusted against his performance fees for performing in different events organised by Ghosh. However, at the same time, Sengupta said that the entire arrangement was based on mutual trust and there was no paper-agreement on this count.