CBI arrests third TMC legislator in Bengal recruitment scam
CBI had been questioning Trinamool Congress legislator from Burwan in Murshidabad district, Jiban Krishna Saha, and searching his house since Friday
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Jiban Krishna Saha, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator from Burwan in Murshidabad district, early on Monday for his alleged involvement in bribe-for-job scam in the West Bengal school education department, officials said.
The federal agency had been questioning the legislator and searching his house since Friday. It was the longest raid so far in the probe into the recruitment scam.
Saha is the third sitting legislator to be arrested in the scam. He was being brought to Kolkata and is likely to be produced in the court later during the day.
Officials from the federal agency said documents linked to a few hundred people who apparently paid bribe for school jobs were found in five bags that were allegedly stashed in shrubs and bushes behind Saha’s house.
“Five bags of documents were recovered from the bushes adjacent to the boundary wall of his house. The documents affixed with photographs of aspiring candidates, who had allegedly paid bribes, were recovered. The bribe collected runs into multiple crores,” said a statement issued by the agency.
Saha allegedly threw his two mobile phones into an adjacent pond when the CBI team arrived at his residence on Friday morning. The agency used three pumps for around 48 hours to drain the pond. An earth mover was brought in on Sunday afternoon to dig out the sludge since hired labourers could find only one phone after the water was fully drained.
In May 2022, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered the 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 suspected involvement of TMC leaders surfaced when the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a parallel probe, arrested education minister Partha Chatterjee and his aide Arpita Mukherjee on July 23, 2022. Chatterjee was dropped from the government and suspended from the TMC.
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 duo.
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.
On Friday, the CBI raided six locations in Bengal, including Saha’s home in Murshidabad. A construction site at New Town on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata and some places in Birbhum district were also raided.
The search operations started hours before Union home minister Amit Shah arrived in Bengal to launch the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign in the state. He addressed a rally at Siuri town in Birbhum district.
Criticised by two Calcutta high court judges, who observed that the CBI investigation appeared slow and directionless, the agency recently brought in seven officers from other states to add pace to the probe.