Bengal SSC Recruitment Scam: CBI to examine digital data, more people under scanner

The central investigating agency will call more people for interrogation and is likely to make it’s first arrest in the case. Senior officials from Delhi had held meetings in Kolkata and a decision has been taken to step up the probe into this case, sources said.

In the last three days, Minister of State for School Education Paresh Chandra Adhikary was questioned by a CBI team for more than 16 hours.

The CBI on Saturday grilled him about who all he had contacted to secure a job for his daughter Ankita Adhikary as an assistant teacher in a government-aided school, officials said.

The Calcutta High Court on Friday (May 20) had ordered Ankita’s dismissal and asked her to return the entire salary from the date of her joining since 2018. Ankita was teaching political science to classes 11 and 12 at Indira Girls High School, Mekhliganj, in Cooch Behar district.

The CBI is going to interrogate the minister again this week. Industry and Commerce Minister Minister Partha Chatterjee, former education minister, too will be quizzed again this week.

Also, there are chances of the agency making its first arrest in the SSC scam this week, it is learnt.

On Saturday, the central agency filed an FIR (first information report) against five members of an advisory panel of the School Service Commission in connection with its probe into alleged irregularities in the recruitment to Group-C posts in state government-aided schools.
Kalyanmoy Ganguly, the president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, advisory committee’s former chairman Shanti Prasad Sinha, SSC’s ex-chairman Soumitra Sarkar, commission’s former secretary Ashok Kumar Saha and its former programme officer Samarjit Acharya were named in the FIR.

Those named in the FIR will be summoned and interrogated soon, officials privy to the investigation said.