A local committee member of the Communist Party of India CPI(M), Samar Acharjee, has been ousted from the party after a video of him lying on a bed of money began to do the rounds.

In the video, Acharjee is reportedly saying that he pulled Rs 20 lakhs (approx $32,500) from his bank account to fulfill his "long cherished dream of sleeping on a bed of money," reports NDTV.


He goes on to add, "I am not a hypocrite like other party members who depict themselves as proletariat, yet have a huge amount of money."Acharjee is reported to have milked money through civic contracts, largely building public latrines, that he landed over the years.

Since then, Adam Halliday of The Indian Express visited Acharjee in what he describes as "a two-room tin house in a narrow by-lane near Agartala's Jugendranagar railway station." Here's Acharjee's explanation from The Indian Express:


"The "Rs 20 lakh" - it was not nearly as much, Acharjee says - was actually spread out at his business partner Santosh Bhoumik's equally sparse rented flat, a few minutes away.

"They took turns lying on the money, Acharjee adds, as a joke. "We had withdrawn more than Rs 16 lakh for work on April 24. My house is nearer to Tripura Gramin Bank and so we kept the money there," says Bhoumik, who describes himself as a Left sympathizer.


"The people who were to collect the money were an hour late. So we put the cash on the bed. We are not well-off people, and we were excited about having so much money. So to pass time we took videos of each other on our cellphones - just as a joke, an innocent joke," says Acharjee. Acharjee told Halliday he did lie on the money but the video was edited to make it look like there was more money than there actually was. Acharjee claims the original video on his phone has been deleted and the entire fiasco has been an attempt to embarrass the Communist Party.

Watch the video here: