The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday conducted raids simultaneously at seven places in and around Calcutta in connection with its probe into the alleged irregularities in recruitment in schools of West Bengal, a senior officer said.
Former Education Minister Partha Chattopadhyay, MLA Manik Bandyopadhyay, and multiple bureaucrats are in custody in the case.
The Enforcement Directorate raids were held at the residences and offices of those who allegedly “acted as middlemen” in the scam, he said. “These middlemen used to collect money and transfer it to various addresses. We are conducting raids at residences and offices used by them,” the ED officer added.
Accompanied by a huge number of Central forces, the ED officers started search operations at New Town and Nayabad on the eastern fringes of Kolkata, he said.
The raids were carried out by ED officers in New Town and Nayabad areas on the outskirts of Kolkata in the alleged irregularities in the recruitment at West Bengal. The ED sleuths assisted by the Central paramilitary forces raided the house of a middleman Prasanna Roy and searched his premises in the case. Roy is an accused in the recruitment scam and had been arrested by the CBI but later he obtained bail from the Supreme Court in November 2023.
Roy was arrested by the CBI from his office at a five-star hotel building in New Town on August 26, 2022. The same year, Shanti Prasad Sinha, the then advisor of the West Bengal School Services Commission, was also arrested by the ED in the recruitment scam case.
CBI traced the numbers of the two middlemen Pradeep Singh and Prasanna Roy from his phone. Prasanna Roy is said to be close to the then Education Minister Partha Chattopadhyay. Chattopadhyay is still in jail in the case.
Pradeep Singh, one of the middlemen in the teacher recruitment scam, was interrogated by the CBI to learn about Prasanna Roy’s huge assets. Prasanna Roy is a real estate businessman, who also had a car business. Sources said that Prasanna Roy used to work as a painter and contractor and his meteoric rise caught the attention of central agency officials.
Roy is said to have five houses in New Town and Rajarhat areas alone. In addition, the officials of the Central agency have found traces of his huge property outside the State.
