Teachers' scam: CBI gets fresh five-day custody of Subiresh Bhattacharya

Kolkata, Dec 17 A special CBI court on Saturday granted permission to the probe agency to take fresh custody of former chairman of West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) and ex-VC of the University of North Bengal, Subiresh Bhattacharya, for five days for interrogation in connection with the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam in West Bengal.

Bhattacharya will be presented in the same court again on December 22.

Bhattacharya has been in judicial custody since the time he was arrested by the CBI in September this year. Before being remanded to judicial custody after his arrest, Bhattacharya was in CBI custody for a brief period.

On Saturday, the CBI counsel told the court that fresh custody of Bhattacharya for questioning has become necessary to take the investigation process forward.

The CBI counsel also informed the court that the agency has come across some fresh clues related to the scam.

The CBI counsel said that besides the recruitment of teaching staff, Bhattacharya also played an important role in the recruitment of non-teaching staff for Group-C and Group-D, the recruitment exams for which is also conducted by WBSSC. Recently, the CBI got access to 50 optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets of recruitment examinations for non-teaching staff.

Bhattacharya's counsel Tamal Mukhopadhyay insisted that since his client is already in judicial custody, the CBI officers could easily interrogate him there. However, the CBI counsel objected to that, citing technical difficulties in the matter. Finally, Judge Arpan Chattopadhyay remanded him to fresh CBI custody for five days.

Recently, Bhattacharya had moved a bail plea in the Calcutta High Court which was rejected on December 13.

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