Recruitment scam in Bangladeshi schools: CBI registers FIR against five officials

The CBI has filed an FIR against five members of an advisory panel of the West Bengal School Service Commission in connection with its investigation into alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Group C posts in state-supported schools, an official said on Sunday. The central agency named the former chairman of the advisory committee Shanti Prasad Sinha, SSC’s ex-chairman Soumitra Sarkar, the former secretary of the committee Ashok Kumar Saha and her ex-programmer officer Samarjit Acharya in the FIR.

It also mentioned Kalyanmoy Ganguly, the chairman of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education in the first information report. The CBI charged them with criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery, the official said. The agency has asked the five officials to “submit details of their bank balances and income tax returns, as well as details of properties they have purchased in other people’s names,” the agency official said. In its FIR, the central agency also stated that the SSC advisory panel had been formed “at the behest of then Education Minister Partha Chatterjee,” he said. The development came after state minister Paresh Adhikari was questioned for the third consecutive day on Saturday about his daughter’s ‘illegal’ appointment as a teacher at a government-supported school.

The agency also questioned Chatterjee in connection with its investigation into alleged irregularities in school recruitment. Chatterjee, who is now the Minister of Industry and Trade in Mamata Banerjee’s government, was the Minister of Education when the alleged illegal appointments were made. A division bench of the Supreme Court of Calcutta on May 18 upheld a single injunction for the CBI investigation into “illegal” appointments made in government-aided schools by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education on the recommendations of the SSC.

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