Bengal School Job Case: ED Attaches Property Worth Rs 56.50 Crore Held By Middleman

(MENAFN- IANS) Kolkata, April 23 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday announced that it has provisionally attached assets worth Rs 56.50 crore in connection with the multi-crore cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

According to a statement issued by the ED, the attached property in the form of land parcels, commercial spaces, flats, and villas was owned by middleman Prasanna Kumar Roy, who was earlier arrested by the agency in the school job case.

This property attachment is in connection to the ED investigation in the case related to irregularities in the recruitment of non-teaching staff in Group C and Group-D categories in different state run schools in the state.

"ED has earlier attached properties worth Rs 163.66 crore in this case of Group C & D staff recruitment scam in the state of West Bengal and arrested Prasanna Kumar Roy (the main middleman involved in the collection of money and details from candidates) and Chandan Mondal (main agent of Prasanna Kumar Roy) and both are presently in judicial custody," the ED statement said.

The statement has also claimed that in a related case about irregularities in appointments of secondary and higher secondary teachers in West Bengal, the ED officials had earlier attached properties worth Rs 238.78 crore.

"In another case of primary teachers' recruitment scam in the state of West Bengal, ED has already attached/seized properties worth Rs 151 crore. Thus, the total attachment by ED Kolkata in the recruitment scam cases stands at Rs 609.9 crore. Further investigation is under progress," it said.

Earlier this month, a Supreme Court division bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar upheld an earlier order passed last year by the Calcutta High Court's division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi, cancelling 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs, which is the entire panel of the WBSSC for 2016.

The apex court also accepted the observation of the division bench of the Calcutta High Court that the entire panel had to be cancelled because of the failure on the part of the state government and the commission to segregate the "genuine" candidates from the "tainted" ones.

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