South Calcutta Law College handed over documents relating to its governing body meetings in the past two years to Calcutta University on Thursday.
Last Wednesday, a CU team visited the law college, where a student was gang-raped on June 25.
The team sought, among other things, details of the governing body meeting that approved the appointment of Monojit Mishra as a casual employee, who is the key accused in the gang rape.
On Wednesday, CU’s officiating vice-chancellor Santa Datta Dey asked the college to submit the necessary details that the CU team will scrutinise within a day.
CU registrar Debasis Das said the team started scrutinising the documents running into 450 pages on Friday.
A CU official said they would examine the resolution of the governing body meeting on July 2, 2024, which cleared the appointment of Mishra as a casual employee.
Mishra had been charge-sheeted in several earlier cases, including for harassing women, assault and damaging college property, police said.
“We want to find out why the governing body thought it prudent to appoint Mishra, who police have identified as a history-sheeter following his multiple arrests, as a casual staff. The university would like to know what role was played by the two university nominees to the governing body while the appointment was being approved. Was any police verification of the records of those being appointed done by the governing body?” a CU official said.
The document that reached the university also contains details on the formation of the governing body. A CU official said they were looking into the governing body formation to find out when and how the body was constituted.
The governing body was constituted in 2017. It has a tenure of four years and has to be reconstituted after the expiry of its term.
“We have received allegations that the governing body of the law college in Kasba was not reconstituted. From the documents, we want to ascertain whether the allegation is true,” the official said.
Calls and text messages to Nayna Chatterji, the vice-principal of the law college, went unanswered.
A CU official said they had received complaints of illegal admission of students from some of the governing body members.
The documents state how Mishra, a former Trinamool student unit president of the law college and a practising criminal lawyer at Alipore court, controlled the alleged illegalities in the admission process. The West Bengal Bar Council cancelled Mishra’s licence on June 30, after he was arrested for the gang-rape.
After Mishra’s arrest, it has surfaced that Zaib Ahmed, 19, a second-year student who was arrested with Mishra, entered the college in 2023 with a rank of 2,634 in the university’s law entrance test. In a government-aided law college like the one in Kasba, the first 500 rank-holders secure admission,” the official said.
So far, Mishra, 31, Ahmed, Pramit Mukherjee, 20, another second-year student, and security guard Pinaki Banerjee, 55, have been arrested for their involvement in the
alleged gang-rape.