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HC sets up SIT for Bengal case on advice of ex-CBI officer who probed fodder scam
Retired IPS officer Upen Biswas, the officer who advised Calcutta high court to set up a special team, led CBI probe into the fodder scam under the direct supervision of the Patna high court, which shielded him and his team from political interference and pressure from senior officials
The Calcutta high court on Wednesday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to set up a dedicated special investigation team (SIT) to probe the alleged corruption in the recruitment of school teachers by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government on a suggestion by a former CBI officer Upen Biswas who led the agency’s probe into Bihar’s fodder scam in the 1990s.
Former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has been convicted in five of the cases that were investigated by a team led by Biswas. To be sure, Biswas, who retired in 2002, joined the Trinamool Congress and won the Bagdah assembly seat in 2011 when Mamata Banerjee came to power for the first time. Biswas was made a minister but he distanced himself from the TMC after 2018 following differences with Mamata Banerjee..
The bench of justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, which earlier ordered CBI to investigate the recruitment of high school teachers and staff by the School Service Commission in 2018, on June 8 asked the 81-year-old retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer for help.
On Wednesday, Biswas first took oath as a witness before the high court and told the bench that a man named Chandan Mondal, a resident of North 24 Parganas district’s Bagdah assembly constituency from where he was elected in 2011, played a key role in recruiting teachers in exchange for a huge amount of money.
“But Chandan Mondal is just a dot in a series of people. An organised operation cannot be carried out without the involvement of senior government functionaries,” Biswas told the court.
On the CBI probe into the irregularities, Biswas also shared his perspective on how the court should move.
“The CBI has very low manpower. The CBI director should recruit more officers. A dedicated SIT of the CBI should investigate this case. The probe must be monitored directly by the high court. If that happens, not even the prime minister can influence the investigation. Officers of the SIT cannot be transferred or made to work in other cases. The CBI must submit a list of these officers to the court,” Biswas told justice Gangopadhyay.
In course of the hearing, justice Gangopadhyay asked Biswas why he did not expose Chandan Mondal earlier.
“You are a highly respected man. Why didn’t you inform the police? You were a minister too. Why was no action taken?” the judge asked.
“I was helpless. I could not do anything,” Biswas told the court, without delving into details.
Over the last year, Biswas had been writing on social media about a person who played a key role in the irregularities in teacher recruitment. He did not, however, name the person in the social media posts, and called this person Ranjan.
Biswas said, “I am on oath now. I state that Ranjan is in fact Chandan Mondal.”
Justice Gangopadhyay lamented during the hearing that there was no visible outcome of the CBI probe into some of the old cases in Bengal and this was causing disappointment.
Lawyers representing the CBI told the court that results in the teacher recruitment cases will soon be visible as a new joint director has joined the Kolkata office. N Venugopal replaced Pankaj Srivastava as joint director on Monday. The latter was in charge of the Saradha, Narada and other important investigations.
Reacting to Wednesday’s development, TMC spokesperson Jay Prakash Majumdar said : “The state police was carrying out an investigation in this case. The track record of the CBI is not very impressive if one takes into account old cases such as the theft of Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize medallion in 2004.”
