Former state minister Partha Chatterjee has been named in a chargesheet filed by the CBI in connection with allegedly illegal appointment to Group C posts at government-aided schools.
The central agency filed the chargesheet in the special (CBI) court in Alipore on Friday. A CBI officer said that apart from Chatterjee, 15 persons have been named in the chargesheet.
Among them is Santi Prasad Sinha, former adviser to the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC).
Chatterjee and the others have been charged under the IPC sections on cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. If convicted, they can be sent to jail for seven years.
The CBI had registered the case on May 20 and taken Chatterjee, who was education minister when the allegedly illegal appointments were made, into its custody earlier in September.
Chatterjee was later sent to judicial custody in connection with the case.
A CBI officer said Sinha; Samarjit Acharya, former programmer at WBSSC; Saumitra Sarkar, former chairman of WBSSC; Ashoke Saha, former secretary of the commission; and Kalyanmoy Ganguly, former president of the board of secondary education and “other public servants” in the state education department had “extended undue advantage” in appointing “undeserving and unlisted candidates” to Group C posts.
Among those named as accused in the chargesheet filed on Friday are Dipankar Ghosh, Subrata Khan, Akshay Moni, Samaresh Mondal, Soumya Kanti Middya, Avijit Dalai, Sukanta Malik, Idrish Ali Molla, Ajit Bar and Forid Hossain Laskar, a CBI officer said.
According to the CBI, the advisory panel of the commission had issued recommendations for appointments for unsuccessful candidates by issuing fictitious memos in the name of regional school service commissions and using scanned signatures of the chairpersons of the regional commissions without their knowledge.
On the basis of these recommendations, appointment letters were issued bypassing the standard chain of hierarchy and without sending those recommendation letters to the appointment section of the board of secondary education, the CBI document mentions.
“The chargesheet has been filed. We will plan the next move after going through it,” Chatterjee’s lawyer Sk. Salim Rahman said on Friday.
Chatterjee had earlier been chargesheeted in connection with a money laundering case initiated by the Enforcement Directorate against him and his alleged associate Arpita Mukherjee.
Chatterjee and others are in judicial remand.
