New Delhi, April 17
The CBI has arrested TMC MLA Jiban Krishna Saha from his residence in Murshidabad district in connection with the illegal recruitment in state-sponsored and aided schools, as a special local court has sent him to the agency’s custody for four days, officials said today.
Following a marathon questioning, the MLA was arrested and brought to the CBI office at Nizam Palace in Kolkata, which around 220 km from Murshidabad, said sources. When produced before a special CBI court in the evening, he was remanded to four days in the agency’s custody as his bail plea was rejected, the officials informed. According to reports the CBI lawyer, seeking Saha’s five-day custody, submitted that several documents linked to the scam were recovered from his residence, and that he needs to be questioned with regard to conspiracy with other persons in the irregularities.
The CBI also submitted in the court that he tried to destroy evidence by throwing away his mobile phones during the searches at his house.
Saha, 46, allegedly dumped his two mobile phones in a pond adjacent to his house when the agency raided him. It was fished out on Sunday evening, the officials said. Former minister in the state government Partha Chatterjee, who held the education portfolio between 2014 and 2021 when the irregularities in the recruitment are alleged to have taken place, and another MLA Manik Bhattacharya were arrested last year. Bhattacharya is the ex-president of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education. The case is being probed on the orders of the High Court.
saha 3rd legislator to be arrested
- Jiban Krishna Saha is the third TMC MLA to be arrested by the CBI and the ED in the teachers’ job ‘scam’
- Former state minister Partha Chatterjee and MLA Manik Bhattacharya had been arrested earlier
