A senior agency official who wished to remain anonymous stated that the CBI submitted the arguments in four sealed reports to the court in the final week of September. On September 28, the Calcutta High Court officially opened two of the reports.
The Calcutta high court was informed last month that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is looking into the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam, has discovered over 8,000 manipulations in hard discs and a computer in the commission’s office to recruit undeserving candidates.
Partha Chatterjee, a former state minister of education, and Arpita Mukherjee, his assistant, were previously detained by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a separate probe. Chatterjee served as the state’s minister of education from 2014 until 2021. The two are being held right now.
The CBI submitted the court with the aforementioned information in four reports wrapped in sealed envelopes during the last week of September, according to a senior agency official who wished to remain nameless. Two of the reports were authorized by the court on September 28.
Since 2014, a total of 23,449 candidates have been hired to work in state-run schools as group-C (non-teaching) and group-D (non-teaching) employees as well as teachers for grades nine through twelve. 3,481 manipulations total, 2,823 manipulations in group-D recruitment, 907 manipulations in the recruitment of instructors for classes XI and XII, and 952 manipulations in the recruitment of teachers for classes IX and X.
Several candidates were also found to have either submitted blank OMR (special types of sheets on which candidates must completely fill the bubbles or put a checkmark in boxes to mark the answer of different questions) sheets or had only answered six to seven out of more than 50 questions, it was discovered during the course of the investigation.
The official stated that although some candidates submitted blank OMR papers with just their names and roll numbers filled in, others responded to six to seven questions.
The official said,” Manipulations in the hard drives, motherboard, and server of the office computer assisted in raising the scores of such candidates.”
On March 31, the high court ordered the CBI to investigate the case. On May 20, the CBI filed its complaint, and on September 30, it unveiled its 16-person accusation against Chatterjee, five former SSC top officials, and ten aspirants.
On September 19, the ED, which is looking into allegations of money laundering, filed its complaint against Chatterjee and Mukherjee. Both Chatterjee and Mukherjee have denied any involvement with the money found during the investigation.
Sudipta Dasgupta, an attorney for one of the petitioners in the case and an advocate in the high court, claimed that several hired candidates seemed to have received similar exam scores. “What attracted our notice was that some of the hired individuals received the same grades. Out of 55, they scored 53. Many of them submitted blank OMR papers that were later altered, the CBI investigation eventually found, he said.