A special court here on Saturday reserved its verdict on the Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s appeal for the custody of Bengal minister Chandranath Sinha until Tuesday.

The central agency, which is probing the money trail in alleged irregularities in appointments at state-aided schools, told the court during the day that it wanted the custody of the minister for correctional services and micro, small, medium enterprises and textiles for a week.

ED's counsel said the agency could have arrested Sinha a year back when it had found several lakhs of alleged unaccounted cash at his house, but waited to collect more evidence against the minister.

"The minister did not submit documents that were sought from him for several months. But within hours of the ED submitting the charge sheet against him, all of them were furnished to the agency," ED's counsel told the court. "He is an influential person, and we need him in custody for seven days."

The central agency submitted the charge-sheet against Sinha in August after receiving the sanction from governor C.V. Anand Bose.

Sinha, the Trinamool Congress MLA of Bolpur, is the second lawmaker from the party to be arraigned in the case of alleged irregularities in the recruitment process at state-aided schools across Bengal.

Partha Chatterjee, former education minister, was the first Trinamool MLA to be chargesheeted in the case.

Senior ED officers claimed that after submitting the charge sheet, Sinha could account for ₹19 lakh out of ₹41 lakh, seized from his house in March last year.

Referring to the minister's income tax returns, the ED said Sinha had paid around ₹90 lakh as a fine to the income tax department, but the source of the money was not clear.

Sinha's counsel wondered why the ED needed the minister's custody after a charge-sheet had been submitted against him. He added that the ED had sought a few documents which couldn't be handed over within a short time.

Sinha's counsel said the minister had been summoned in July, and his representative met the investigating officers. In August, his counsel said the relevant documents would be submitted by the 7th. But the charge sheet had been submitted a day before.

After hearing both sides, the court said the verdict on the ED's appeal would be declared on Tuesday.