Bengal school job case: Partha Chatterjee moves fresh bail plea at special CBI court

Kolkata: Former West Bengal Education Minister and the Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee, on Tuesday, moved a fresh bail petition at a special court of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Kolkata in connection with the multi-crore cash for school job case in West Bengal.

The hearing in the matter will be on November 13. Earlier also he had moved several bail pleas at different courts including the Calcutta High Court, which were rejected by all the courts concerned.

Chatterjee had been behind bars since he was arrested in July 2022 by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials, after the central agency officials recovered huge amounts of cash and gold from the twin residences of Chatterjee’s close aide Arpita Mukherjee.

On October 1, CBI, which is conducting a parallel probe in the school job case had shown Chatterjee and another accused in the case Ayan Shil as arrested. It is perceived that because of this fresh development of CBI showing him arrested, Chatterjee had made this fresh bail application at the special court of CBI in Kolkata.

Meanwhile, CBI has claimed to have procured specific evidence against Chatterjee that shows how the latter played a crucial role in personally shortlisting ineligible candidates paying money for appointment and recommending their names for that purpose.

The investigating officials of the central agency have also claimed to have evidence of Chatterjee forwarding the list shortlisted by him to an erstwhile bureaucrat attached to the state education department.

As claimed by the CBI insiders they procured the preliminary evidence at state education department headquarters and thereafter their officials interrogated Chatterjee at a correctional home in South Kolkata.

During the interrogation, Chatterjee made a number of inconsistent statements through which the investigating officials secured additional clues in the matter.