Bengal cash-for-school job scam: Accused businessman to turn approver before CBI

Kolkata: Santu Gangopadhyay, a Kolkata-based businessman and an accused in the multi-crore cash-for-school-job case in West Bengal, on Saturday wrote a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) with a plea to become an approver in the matter.

Sources aware of the development said that in his letter to the CBI, Gangopadhay had claimed that despite being willing to divulge secrets in the school job scam much earlier, he was found to remain silent because of life threat during the previous Trinamool Congress government.

Now, as the Kolkata-based businessman claimed in the letter to the CBI, with the change of government in West Bengal after the Assembly elections earlier this year, Gangopadhay had gained the confidence of revealing everything to the central probe agency and hence he had pleaded to become an approver in the matter.

Named in the chargesheet of the CBI in case of recruitment of primary teachers in the state-run schools, Gangopadhyay was also arrested earlier in the matter. However, he is currently released on bail.

He was known as an extremely close confidant of the former West Bengal Education Minister and the former Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee, who had also been lodged in jail for more than three years because of his involvement in the school job case. Chatterjee is also out on bail now.

Sources said that in his letter to the CBI, Gangopadhyay said how he and Kuntal Ghosh, one of the accused in the recruitment corruption case, delivered the money to a top leader in Trinamool Congress.

In the letter, Gangopadhyay also claimed that he and Kuntal Ghosh also faced the ire of that top Trinamool Congress leader for not being able to meet the target of collecting Rs 5 crore from candidates aspiring to be primary teachers in the state-run schools.

Sources said that in his letter, Gangopadhay had claimed that even after the change of government in the state he had been getting threat calls from some people involved in the alleged school-job scam.

He had also pleaded for the security of his family members.

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