Kolkata, March 18 The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to submit the detailed case diaries on the agency's ongoing investigation in the multi-crore irregularities in different municipalities in West Bengal.
The division bench of Justice Debangshu Basak and Justice Smita Das gave the direction while hearing the bail petition filed by accused Ayan Sil.
As the matter came up for hearing on Tuesday, the division bench sought the case diaries in the matter from CBI. Thereafter, the CBI counsel argued that since the investigation in the matter is related to irregularities in a total of 17 municipalities, the documents related are voluminous.
The CBI counsel also argued that it would be easier for the agency to submit a report on the matter instead of the case diaries.
However, the division bench refused to accept the argument of the CBI counsel and questioned the problem in submitting voluminous documents. Thereafter, it directed the CBI to submit the case diaries in the matter to the court.
The matter will be heard again on Wednesday. Recently, Sil was granted bail in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case, where he was also an accused. However, he was unable to get himself out of jail because of the pending registered cases against him by both the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), in the municipalities’ recruitment irregularities case.
Sil was arrested in March 2023 by the ED officials in the school jobs case. In fact, during his arrest at that point in time, the ED recovered a number of documents from his residence that for the first time threw light on the municipalities’ recruitment irregularities.
Late he was shown as arrested by both the ED and the CBI in the municipalities’ recruitment irregularities cases. In this case, Sil was accused of arranging jobs in at least 17 municipalities in West Bengal against money. The total number of recruitments made illegally in these 17 municipalities stood at 1,821.
The total scam size in the municipalities’ recruitment irregularities cases, as estimated by the central agency officials, is around Rs 200 crore. The majority of these 17 municipalities where such recruitment irregularities took place were from the North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts.
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