Curated By: Sukanya Nandy
Last Updated: August 08, 2023, 10:13 IST
As many as four teachers who have got jobs by giving money in SSC have been arrested on Monday, August 7. The Alipur CBI special court summoned them and from there judge directed their arrest. The teachers, all of whom hail from Murshidabad, were identified as Jahiruddin Shek, Saugar Hussain Murshidabad, Simar Hussain, and Saugata Mondal.
A special PMLA on Monday remanded the four ineligible candidates to judicial custody till August 21. For the first time, teachers have been arrested in the SSC scam case in the state. Judge Arpan Chattopadhyay, while ordering judicial custody of the four teachers said that those getting jobs by paying money are the roots of all these corrupt practices.
He also said that no one had directly approached the accused teachers for money. “Rather, these accused teachers approached the concerned people with money. The CBI earlier almost gave clean shit to them. But I summoned them. There are enough material evidence against them,” the judge observed.
All the teachers were named in the charge sheet filed by the CBI. These four candidates got the jobs by paying money through Tapas Mondal, one of the accused in the case who is also in judicial custody now.
The series of arrests in the school jobs case started with the arrest of former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in July last year.
Earlier, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court terminated the services of 36,000 primary teachers in state-run schools in West Bengal. Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress legislator Manik Bhattacharya had used a network of agents to sell teaching jobs against money, he had said. According to him, the investigation by the Enforcement Directorate has proved that these jobs were sold to those who could pay money for them.
Justice Gangopadhyay observed that blatant breaking of rules and norms was evident in the entire recruitment process. Ineligible candidates were granted higher marks in the interview part in return for money. Candidates scoring extremely low marks in secondary and higher secondary examinations were even granted nine out of 10 marks in the interview process. In most cases, Justice Gangopadhyay observed that the aptitude tests were not even conducted.
— with inputs from PTI and IANS
