Bengal School Job Case: CBI Gets Court Nod for Collecting Kuntal Ghosh’s Voice Samples

KOLKATA:
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on Friday, received the permission of a special court in Kolkata to collect the voice samples of Kuntal Ghosh, another accused in the cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

On February 11, after three failed attempts, the CBI finally collected the voice samples of the prime accused in the case of Sujay Krishna Bhadra.

The CBI counsel, on Friday, informed the special court that the collection of voice samples of Kuntal Ghosh has become necessary following the sourcing of new evidence by the investigating officials.

Satisfied with the arguments of the CBI counsel, the judge of the special court permitted the Central agency to collect Ghosh’s voice samples. February 18 has been fixed by the court for the collection of the voice samples.

Ghosh is currently out on bail. He was arrested a couple of years back by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a parallel probe in the school job case. Later CBI too had shown him as arrested in connection with the school job case.

The main charge against Ghosh is that he was responsible for collecting several crores of rupees from different job-seekers who paid money to get jobs in state-run schools in West Bengal.

Another charge against him was the creation of a fake website showing unsuccessful candidates in teachers’ eligibility test (TET) examinations as successful ones.

The trial process in the ED-registered case at a special court of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act ((PMLA) in Kolkata has already started this month. There are a total of 53 accused — 29 individuals and 24 corporate entities or trusts — as mentioned in the subsequent charge sheets filed by ED in the matter.

Heavyweight individuals named as accused are the former West Bengal Education Minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee, his close aide Arpita Mukherjee, and his son-in-law Kalyanmoy Bhattacharya among others.

Babli Chatterjee Memorial Trust, a trust named after Chatterjee’s deceased wife, is also named in the ED charge sheet as an accused entity. It is alleged that the ill-proceeds were shown as donations to this particular trust and thus diverted.