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Calcutta HC orders Bengal CID to step up probe into teacher recruitment case
Justice Biswajit Basu, who ordered the CID probe in January this year, reviewed the progress of the investigation
KOLKATA: The Calcutta high court on Thursday pulled up the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the West Bengal police, saying it was not conducting proper investigation into a teacher recruitment case in Murshidabad district, lawyers who attended the hearing said.
Justice Biswajit Basu ordered the CID probe in January this year.
On Wednesday, when a state government report on the investigation was submitted before the court, justice Basu made strong remarks and ordered Soma Das Mitra, the department’s deputy inspector general (DIG) to appear in person before the court on Thursday.
“On Thursday, the judge said he believes that the state government is not trying to shield any of the accused. He said he would not like to be proved wrong. He ordered the CID not to spare anyone,” a lawyer, who presented the state government, said on condition of anonymity.
CID officers refused to comment on the court’s observations.
In May 2022, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the appointment of non-teaching staff (Group C and D) and teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education between 2014 and 2021. The appointees allegedly paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get jobs after failing the selection tests.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched a parallel investigation and arrested the then education minister Partha Chatterjee and his aide Arpita Mukherjee in July, 2022. Several TMC leaders and education department officials have been arrested by the two federal agencies since then.
In January, while hearing a petition filed by some job seekers from Murshidabad, justice Basu entrusted the state CID with the investigation into the alleged irregularities at the district’s Gotha high school.
The petitioners alleged that Animesh Tiwari, the son of the school’s headmaster, Ashish Tiwari, forged documents to get the job in 2020.
During the investigation, CID arrested the father-son duo, a former district inspector (DI) of schools and an employee of the DI’s office.
The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education informed the court during hearings in this case that discrepancies were found in the documents submitted by at least 11 other teachers from the district.
