More names surface in teachers' recruitment scam

Based on this, the ED has begun preparing a list of such agents for further inquiry to get the persons

SNS, Kolkata, 28 January 2023: Kuntal Ghosh, the general secretary of the Trinamul Youth Congress is believed to have given out the ED investigators several names as agents, who had allegedly raised money, made transactions and would contact the alleged aspirants all by themselves.

The investigators are of the opinion that this is a tactic to pass the buck to others to give a new twist to investigations.

Earlier too, several names had surfaced of persons who had allegedly acted as conduits between Shanti Prasad Sinha, Partha Chatterjee, Kalyanmoy Bhattacharya for recommending names to get jobs through alleged manipulation.

The list of names spelt out by Ghosh to ED officers, claimed a source, had many common names earlier revealed by Tapas Mondal to the agency officers.

Based on this, the agency has begun preparing a list of such agents for further inquiry to get to the persons, who are likely real beneficiaries of the money channelized as proceeds of crime in the teachers' recruitment scam. 

But the investigators, however, are wary about Ghosh's selective naming of persons and to parrot names of same persons like the former education minister Partha Chatterjee and Gopal Dalpati. While Chatterjee is in Presidency Jail, 

Dalpati, was in Tihar Jail in connection with his alleged complicity in a chit fund scam. But an ED source quoting the economic offence wing in Delhi claimed that Dalpati was bailed out of the jail a year back and now was found unavailable. 

Recently, even queries from the news persons regarding Santanu Banerjee, another TMC leader from Hooghly who the ED had interrogated for last three days, elicited no response from Ghosh, leaving the ED to suspect whether Ghosh was trying to shield big fishes involved in the scam. 

Meanwhile, rigorous interrogation of Banerjee for the last three days had surfaced a sizable quantity of assets belonging to Banerjee and some shady investments left the investigators suspicious about the dealings likely to have bearing the proceeds of crime. 

WhatsApp chat hinting question paper leak recovered: 

The ED, probing the multi- crore teachers' recruitment scam, has recovered WhatsApp chat hinting at possible advance leaking of question papers to select candidates who took the written examination for primary teachers' posts in West Bengal in 2016. 

Sources said that the selective leaking of question papers were mainly done by the youth Trinamul Congress leader, Kuntal Ghosh. The probe agency has also recovered Whatsapp chats indicating that Ghosh enjoyed the patronage of former state education minister and Trinamul Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee. 

From the documents seized from Ghosh's residence, the central agency officials have also recovered copies of the admit cards of certain candidates who appeared for the recruitment examination for primary teachers in 2016. 

The ED sleuths have come across the names of 35 individuals who secured jobs as teachers in state run schools by paying money to the arrested youth leader and all of them are currently employed with different schools. Each and every one of them will be questioned to take the investigation forward. 

"The recruitment scam seems to be in multiple layers, which again have sub-layers involving multiple players and multiple angles. The uncovering of one layer is leading to other layers.

That's why the investigation process is getting prolonged," said a legal associate of ED. The fact that question papers were leaked to select candidates was established after the ED sleuths noticed that some extremely below average candidates, as per their academic records, scored exorbitantly in the recruitment examination. 

Sources said that the marks secured in their academic examinations did not justify their scores in their optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets.