Epicenter of Teachers” recruitment scam in WB was the CM’s nephew MP Abhisek Banerjee’s office..?
PARTHA SARTHI SEN GUPTA
KOLKATA: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) , in its recently submitted third supplementary charge sheet in the multicrore cash-for-school job case, referred to an audio file of a recorded conversation from 2017 and named a certain Abhishek Banerjee who demanded Rs 15 crore for the illegal appointments.
The central agency, in the charge sheet, never clarified the identity of this Abhishek Banerjee, although the name is an exact match to the name of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool Congress national general secretary, against whom the state’s political opposition has, in the past, repeatedly alleged involvement in the scam. The TMC MP has already appeared before central probe agencies the ED and the CBI multiple times and faced examinations in connection with the alleged recruitment irregularities.
Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee’s MP nephew Abhishek Banerjee on Wednesday accused the CBI of “harassing” him after his name was apparently referred in its third supplementary chargesheet in the government school teachers’ recruitment scam.Reacting to these claims, Mr Banerjee’s counsel Sanjay Basu said, “This statement is issued on behalf of my client, Shri Abhishek Banerjee, in response to the misleading and unsubstantiated claims made in the latest CBI chargesheet regarding the alleged teacher recruitment case in West Bengal and certain media reports.”
The MP’s lawyer Sanjay Basu released a press statement and called the charge sheet submitted before a special CBI court of claims “misleading and unsubstantiated” and branded it as “nothing more than a fishing expedition aimed at harassing my client”. As it is categorically mentioned in the third supplementary charge sheet recently submitted by CBI that a lion’s share of the whooping sum of nearly a hundred crores bribe collected from “undeserving “ candidates in the scam was delivered in the office of Abhisek Banerjee. 
As per sources, the central agency has also pointed out that the name of the office: LEAPS AND BOUNDS. Though in the third supplementary chargesheet CBI has only mentioned the name but not the identity and other details of Abhisek Banerjee, in a press release issued by ED in connection with the teacher recruitment scam in September, 2023 has categorically stated , “ Abhishek Banerjee, is the Chief Executive Officer of M/s Leaps and Bounds Pvt. Limited and was also a director of the company …”
Now the CBI investigation has revealed that the bribe for illegal appointment from the undeserving candidates were collected by a number of agents and sub agents. Say, of the primary accused in the recruitment scam Kuntal Ghosh has collected about Rs. 25 crore from aspirants of Primary, Upper Primary, SLST (STATE LEVEL SELECTION TEST) i.e. IX-X, XI-XII, Group C, D etc from his network of sub agents.
During the probe, copy of one diary of accused Tapas Kumar Mondal was seized and in that diary it is reflected Mondal has himself delivered Rs. 19.47 cr to Kuntal Ghosh for securing jobs for the undeserving candidates of various examination. Furthermore, Kuntal Ghosh has delivered Rs. 10-12 crores to another accused Sujoy krishno Bhadra. A part of the money was handed over to Bhadra at the office ‘M/s Leaps and Bounds Pvt. Limited’ at New Alipore, Kolkata. CBI has also mentioned in the charge sheet that Bhadra used to work as the COO in ‘M/s Leaps and Bounds Pvt. Limited’.
It is now exposed more or less an amount of Rs. 78 cr was collected as bribe. Not only that also lead agents like Kuntal, Bhadra and Santunu Banerjee were planning to collect bribe to the tune of Rs. 100 cr from additional 2000 candidates for paying off Partha Chatterjee, Manik Bhattachrya and Abhishek Banerjee @ Rs. 20 cr and sharing the reaming amount among themselves. To be noted Partha, the then Minister of Education is now languishing in jail for more than 2 years , Manik a TMC MLA was also taken into custody by central agency and now in bail. As per the charge sheet later on a deep rift occurred in between Partha and Abhisek on the issue of illegal appointment. Also abhishek demanded Rs. 15 cr for the illegal documents already done. But Bhadra expressed his inability to procure more bribe.
