Kolkata 24 August : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) detectives, investigating the multi-crore West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment scam on Wednesday, conducted a search and raid at the office and residences of North Bengal University (NBU) Vice-Chancellor Subiresh Bhattacharya.Bhattacharya was Chairman of WBSSC in the time between 2014 and the year 2018 with Partha Chatterjee serving as the Education Minister at the time when the teacher recruitment scam was allegedly perpetrated.
Two teams of the CBI separately conducted raids and search operations in Bhattacharya’s home in Siliguri in the north of Bengal and also at his home in Kolkata.In fact, following the search and raid operation the CBI detectives even sealed his home in Bansdroni in the south Kolkata.
After a Wednesday afternoon, when an CBI group of 12 officers arrived at Siliguri the team was split into two sub-teams.While one team carried out the search and raid in Bhattacharya’s office in the NBU campus, the second conducted a raid on his residence in Siliguri.
A CBI source claimed that of the 381 applicants who were issued with invitation letters 222 were enlisted without appearing in the interview and personality test, as none of them passed in the test of writing.The other 159, even though they were able to pass in the exam, ended up not in the list of merits of other applicants.
The entire scandal as per the CBI was a result of the CBI with Bhattacharya in the position of chairman of WBSSC.
In reality the Calcutta High Court-appointed judiciary committee, headed by Justice Ranjit Kumar Bag (retired) also identified Bhattacharya as one of those responsible for the irregularities in recruitment.
In fact the report of the judicial commission was mentioned as one of the most crucial clues that led to the Calcutta High Court’s single judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered an investigation by the CBI investigation in the teacher’s recruitment irregularities scam.
The suspects, Santi Prasad Sinha, the former chairman of the WBSSC’s screening committee, believed to be the center of the fraud and the the former Secretary of the Commission, Ashok Saha, are currently in CBI custody.
CBI sources have said that both statements made by them are totally contradictory.
Chatterjee along with his purported close assistant, Arpita Mukherjee are in Judicial custody right at the moment.
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