Four arrested Bengal teachers paid Rs 22L for jobs, claims CBI charge sheet

Kolkata: Four primary teachers from West Bengal's Murshidabad district, who are currently in judicial custody on charges of procuring school jobs after paying money, had paid Rs 22 lakh to the agents and beneficiaries in the cash-for-school-job case.

As per the charge sheet presented by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), two of the four in judicial custody, namely Zahiruddin Sheikh and Samar Mondal paid Rs 5 lakh each to the middleman, Tapas Mondal, who is also in judicial custody now.

Both these teachers were former students of a private diploma in elementary education (DLED) college owned by Tapas Mondal, sources aware of the contents of the charge sheet said.

The other teachers in custody, namely Saigar Hossain and Simor Hossain, paid Rs 6,00,000 each for ensuring their jobs as primary teachers. They reportedly paid cash to expelled youth Trinamool Congress leader and another accused in the case, Kuntal Ghosh, who is also in judicial custody now.

All four of them got postings in schools in their native district of Murshidabad.

As per the charge sheet, Tapas Mondal collected a total of nearly Rs 4.14 crore from 141 candidates between 2016 and 2022 for securing their school jobs. The money collected by Ghosh from 71 candidates through his agent network was Rs 3.13 crore, as per the CBI charge sheet.

Meanwhile, seven primary teachers from Bankura district, who also allegedly got their jobs after paying cash and were questioned by the central agency sleuths on Tuesday, are also being questioned on Wednesday at the CBI’s Nizam Palace office in central Kolkata.

On Monday, the special PMLA court judge Arpan Chattopadhyay observed that those who paid cash for a job should not be treated as witnesses as done by CBI before but as accused. Describing such teachers who got jobs against cash as the roots of this corruption, the judge also observed that they voluntarily went to the fixers concerned with cash.