ED raids at CSI Kerala diocese, church in Trivandrum

National

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the Mateer Memorial Church in Kerala’s capital city on Monday.

The ED also raided the CSI South Kerala diocesan headquarters, which includes the office of Church supreme leader Bishop A Dharmaraj Rasalam. The raids were carried out in response to charges of corruption at the Church-run medical institution in Karakonam. According to the charges, large sums of money were collected under the guise of granting admission to medical school.

Simultaneous raids were also taken out at the homes of Church secretary T T Praveen and Dr Bennet Abraham, the medical director of CSI Medical College in Karakonam.

“They want to do something against the church, they want to destroy the church. So they are filing cases one by one against different bodies. Let them do it we are happy to face it,” Christian Education Board Director Fr. C R Godwin told ANI.

“Today morning at 6.30 they came and started the raid. They did not inform us. Till now the questioning is going on and Bishop has a conference to attend, if they leave we are happy,” he added.

Meanwhile, the ED detained West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee’s close assistant Arpita Mukherjee on Saturday after the investigative agency found enormous cash worth around Rs 20 crore from the aide’s apartment on Friday.

The raids were carried out at Arpita Mukherjee’s home in connection with an alleged teacher recruitment fraud in the state.

The aforementioned sum is considered to be the revenues of the SSC fraud. More than 20 mobile phones were also discovered from Arpita Mukherjee’s home, the purpose and usage of which are being determined, according to the investigation agency.

Aside from cash, a variety of additional damning documents, records, information of questionable organisations, electronic equipment, foreign money, and gold have been collected from the numerous properties of the scam’s participants.