Sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday collected a number of partially burnt documents which were set on fire in an open field in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district by unidentified people, an officer said.

Though the origin of the documents is yet to be verified, a senior officer of the probe agency said that those papers could be related to mining businesses in several areas of neighbouring Bihar.

The CBI, which is probing into various cases including the school recruitment scam in the state, is examining the half-burnt documents collected from the field in Bhangar area.

"Getting information that documents were being burnt in Bhangar, some of our officers went there and collected some partially burnt papers. Going by the initial look, it seems that they belong to mining affairs in Bihar," the CBI officer told PTI.

Asked if some of the documents are related to the job scam in West Bengal, the officer said, "It does not appear so. This is, however, an initial observation. We need to examine more. We will also test them chemically to have a clear idea." A top source in the CBI said that senior officer Umesh Kumar, who is probing the coal smuggling cases, is examining the recovered half-burnt documents.

"We are also checking who is behind this and how these documents are brought here," he said.

The CBI has talked to the owner of the land where the documents were found burning.

The agency recently raided the house of Trinamool Congress leader Shahjahan Mollah in Bhangar and seized documents related to the recruitment scam.

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