The CBI said on Wednesday it had seized around Rs 50 lakh, a list of around 1,500 candidates for jobs, 1.5kg of gold and property documents from a house linked to a former adviser to the West Bengal School Service Commission.
The agency did not name the advisor and said the property was “allegedly purchased by then advisor of West Bengal School Service Commission and his wife in the name of another person”.
More than one CBI officer said preliminary investigations revealed that Shanti Prasad Sinha, who was chairman of the WBSSC advisory committee from 2016 till 2021, had paid the apartment’s legal owner the entire amount required to buy the property.
“This apartment was bought a few years ago. We have reasons to believe that Sinha had entirely funded the purchase of the property but it is not in his name. We will ask the owner of the flat about the source of the money and the gold that has been seized,” said an officer.
In May, the CBI had registered an FIR against five former members of the WBSSC advisory panel, including Sinha, as part of its probe into alleged irregularities in recruitments for schools. Sinha was arrested in August and is in judicial custody.
Senior CBI officers said the search and seizure operation was carried out late on Tuesday in an apartment off EM Bypass after the sleuths learnt about the existence of the property by interrogating some of those accused in the job scam case.
“We are trying to find out how a list of candidates made its way to the house,” said a senior CBI officer.
Earlier, as part of the investigation into the alleged irregularities, the CBI had raided Sinha’s Survey Park house in southeast Kolkata but apparently did not find anything incriminating.
On Wednesday, the CBI said the person whose house was raided was “part of the network which was involved in illegally giving schools to select candidates.”
