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ED arrests fifth TMC leader Shantanu Banerjee in Bengal job scam case
TMC youth wing leader Shantanu Banerjee’s house in Balagarh area of Hooghly district was raided by ED in January and he has been questioned several times since then.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested Shantanu Banerjee, a Trinamool Congress (TMC) youth wing leader, after interrogating him for eight hours at the federal agency’s Kolkata office in connection with the bribe-for-job scam in the state school education department, ED officials said.
Banerjee’s house in Balagarh area of Hooghly district was raided by ED in January and he has been questioned several times since then. Officials alleged that the raid led to the seizure of a list of 300 examinees who appeared for the teacher eligibility test (TET).
Kuntal Ghosh, another TMC youth wing leader and a resident of Hooghly district, was arrested by ED on January 21. He is now in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
An ED official said on condition of anonymity that Shantanu Banerjee could not explain the source of funds used to purchase some properties. Some of the other suspects told ED that Banerjee used to arrange meetings between prospective job seekers and members of the racket.
In May 2022, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered 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.
ED officials said the involvement of TMC leaders surfaced when the agency arrested former education minister Partha Chatterjee and his aide Arpita Mukherjee on July 23, 2022. In its first charge sheet filed on September 19, ED said it traced cash, jewellery and immovable property worth ₹103.10 crore linked to the two.
TMC legislator from Nadia district and former president of the primary education board, Manik Bhattacharya, was arrested by ED on October 11 last year. He is also in judicial custody and has been named as a key accused in the ED’s second charge sheet.
A former TMC leader, Shahid Imam, was arrested by CBI on February 17 on suspicion that he was one of the agents who collected money from job seekers.
Imam’s father Hasan Imam unsuccessfully contested an assembly and a Lok Sabha election for the TMC when the Left Front was in power. He was a school head master in Hooghly district where the family lives in the Arambagh area. Shahid Imam told investigators that he too was appointed as a school teacher in Howrah district in 2014.
