KOLKATA: In its first arrests in the cash-for-job scam, the CBI on Wednesday took into custody two senior members of the five-member advisory panel set up to oversee school appointments — panel convenor and School Service Commission adviser Santi Prasad Sinha and SSC secretary Ashok Kumar Saha.
The two officials are among the five named by the agency in its May 20 FIR. The others are advisory panel member Soumitra Sarkar, programme officer Samarjit Acharya and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) president Kalyanmoy Ganguly
Earlier, a committee appointed by the Calcutta High Court and led by retired judge Ranjit Bag had in its report held that the setting up of the advisory panel itself was “illegal”. The CBI is probing the irregularities in school appointments on the directions of the Calcutta High Court.
Sinha and Saha were arrested after hours of questioning at the CBI’s Nizam Palace office. The agency has accused the duo of hiding facts and trying to mislead the investigation. They were taken to Sambhunath Pandit Hospital for medical examination and brought back again to the CBI office for further questioning. They will be produced in court on Thursday.
Earlier in May, the CBI had twice questioned former minister Partha Chatterjee on the functioning of the five-member advisory panel that allegedly manipulated the State Level Selection Test (SLST) merit list to accommodate people who didn’t even qualify the written test. Chatterjee had set up the five-member panel when he was the education minister.
