The value of properties amassed by businessman Ayan Sil, arrested for his alleged involvement in irregularities in appointments in government-aided schools, is close to Rs 100 crore, an Enforcement Directorate (ED) official said on Friday.
Sil was arrested on March 20 from his Salt Lake home following a search of his premises that continued for 36 hours. The sleuths said Sil was an aide of Santanu Banerjee, a suspended Trinamul leader from Hooghly and in custody in connection with the job scam.
After the search, the ED said it found a large number of OMR sheets apparently used in job recruitment tests.
The central agency, which is probing Sil’s alleged money trail under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, said that while some of the properties under the scanner were registered in his name, the others were benami assets linked to him.
“Sil had bought the majority of the assets with the money he had collected from job aspirants and are, therefore, ‘proceeds of crime’, an ED official said.
“The properties include land parcels and houses. It appears that parcels of land were purchased in Hooghly and South 24-Parganas districts on behalf of Sil’s son Abhishek and his girlfriend,” the official said.
Investigators said the businessman, whose company won the contract for preparing security codes for OMR sheets used in recruitment tests held by municipalities and the school service commission, had close to 50 bank accounts.
Some of these accounts are in the name of his acquaintances, employees and relatives, they said.
“In 2019, Sil had bought a piece of land in Bhangar, on the southern fringes of the city, in the name of one of his staff members. In 2016, he bought three plots in Bhangar in a day,” an ED official said.
“Over the past few years, Sil had moved away from developing real estate in Hooghly to investing in film production. He had invested in a Bengali film whose shooting is complete but dubbing is yet to be over.”
According to the sleuths, Sil received money from candidates appearing in tests for recruitment of teachers in government-aided primary schools or appointment of drivers, cleaners and other staff in municipalities.
“The money was parked in such a way that it becomes difficult to identify its origin,” said the ED official.
Lawyers appearing for Sil have pleaded in court that the discovery of OMR sheets in the house of a person who runs a company entrusted with barcoding them does not necessarily make him an accomplice.
Compensation
The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission asked Sunflower Nursing Home in Howrah’s Bagnan to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation for “gross negligence” in the case of a woman who died after giving birth to twins at the hospital in 2019.
“Timely intervention when the woman’s health deteriorated could have saved her,” said (retired) justice Ashim Banerjee, the chairperson of the commission, on Friday.
The Telegraph could not reach the hospital for comment.
