Bengal school job case: CBI submits third supplementary charge sheet

Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday filed at a special court in Kolkata its third supplementary charge sheet in connection with the multi-crore cash for school jobs case in West Bengal.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a parallel probe into the school job case, has already filed a total of five charge sheets in the matter.

However, at a special PMLA court in Kolkata, the process of framing charges in the ED-registered case had been postponed repeatedly as the prime accused in the case, Sujay Krishna Bhadra, failed to appear physically in the court, reportedly because of his hospitalisation.

On Saturday, sources aware of the development said that the CBI had also received the permission from the office of West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose to file the chargesheet against the former West Bengal education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee, a process which is mandatory for a court to officially accept the charge sheet filed against any member of the state Cabinet.

Sources said that with the event of getting the nod for filing the chargesheet against Chatterjee, docks are cleared for beginning the process of charge framing against him in the CBI-registered case in the alleged school job scam.

Chatterjee was first arrested in July 2022 by ED officials in July 2022 after huge cash and gold were recovered from the twin residences of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee by the investigating officials.

Since then, Chatterjee has been behind bars at Presidency Central Correctional Home in South Kolkata, though Mukherjee was released on conditional bail recently.

Recently, the CBI had also shown him arrested in the same school job thus making his release from behind bars even more uncertain.

Meanwhile, the total confiscation amount by the Enforcement Directorate has reached Rs 239.26 crore so far in the cash-for-school-job case in West Bengal.