ED tracking links between teachers' recruitment & cattle smuggling scams in Bengal

Kolkata, Dec 9 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is probing the cattle smuggling and teachers' recruitment scams in West Bengal, has started investigating leads that can establish a clear-cut link between the two scams.

Already in two phases, the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) has published the names of 223 illegally recruited or recommended teachers for Class 9 and 10 in different state-run schools, with 183 in the first phase and 40 in the second phase.

ED sources said that their officials were carefully scrutinizing those two lists and trying to track those candidates whose recommendation came from Trinamool Congress strongman and the party's Birbhum district president, Anubrata Mondal, who is already in judicial custody for his alleged links with the cattle smuggling scam.

"Our sleuths are investigating two possibilities. The first is whether Mondal and his associates in Birbhum gained financially from the commissions received from the payments made by candidates recommended by him. The second possibility is whether the bank accounts of such wrongly recommended candidates were used for channelising cattle smuggling proceedings considering that there are records of many such bank accounts held by third parties being used for diversion of scam proceeds," an ED official said.

To recall, in October this year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is also conducting parallel probes both in teachers' recruitment and cattle- smuggling scams, traced some links between the two affairs, when they questioned two individuals, Kajal Roy and Rohit Singh, in connection with the cattle smuggling scam.

Incidentally, Kajal Roy, turned out to be the wife of Prasanna Roy, the middleman arrested by the CBI in the teacher's recruitment scam. Again, Kajal Roy was the niece of the former West Bengal education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general, Partha Chatterjee, who is already in judicial custody in connection to the teachers' recruitment scam. Rohit Singh turned out to be a cousin of Prasanna Roy.