Supreme Court asks Kuntal Ghosh to move HC for bail

MP, 19 Oct 2024, Kolkata: The Supreme Court is learnt to have asked the expelled Trinamool Congress (TMC) youth wing leader Kuntal Ghosh to move the Calcutta High Court for bail in the money laundering case related to the alleged school jobs-for-cash scam in West Bengal. 

A Bench of Justices Surya Kant, CT Ravikumar and Ujjal Bhuyan reportedly disposed of the plea and allowed Ghosh to instead approach the Calcutta High Court. 

The High Court was directed to dispose of the matter speedily, preferably within four weeks. Ghosh reportedly moved the apex court opposing a fresh hearing of his bail plea by a new trial judge despite substantial hearings having taken place before another judge. 

The apex court bench said: “Go to the (Calcutta) High Court. We will ask them to hear expeditiously,” the Bench said. On October 1, the apex court directed a special court in Kolkata to expeditiously dispose of Ghosh’s bail plea. 

Subsequently, the lower court on October 8 denied him bail. Ghosh was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in January 2023 in the West Bengal job recruitment scam case. 

The Supreme Court in May had stayed a Calcutta High Court order cancelling close to 24,000 jobs provided under the 2016 recruitment process by the West Bengal School Service Commission, which is being probed by the ED. 

Several persons, including the former state education minister Partha Chatterjee and TMC party MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha, are behind bars for their alleged involvement in the matter.

https://www.millenniumpost.in/bengal/supreme-court-asks-kuntal-ghosh-to-move-hc-for-bail-583688