KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress MLA from Murshidabad Jiban Krishna Saha collected two of his mobile phones during the course of his interrogation by CBI sleuths on Friday afternoon over irregularities in teacher recruitment in schools, ran towards the rear portion of his house and threw them into a pond. Surprised investigators suspect evidence related to the alleged recruitment scam was stored in the cellphones.
The central agency on Saturday engaged three pumps to drain out water from the pond and asked labourers to search the waterbody. Even after searching for 10 hours, the gadgets could not be recovered.
The CBI swung into action and raided six places of TMC leaders shortly after Union Home minister Amit Shah, while addressing a rally in Birbhum on Friday, said nothing can stop the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) from probing into the recruitment scam in which former education minister Partha Chatterjee and several education department officials were arrested last year.
A team of CBI officers went to the residence of Saha, an MLA from Burwan constituency in Murshidabad. "We came to know about a middleman after interrogating jailed and expelled TMC leader Kuntal Ghosh and while pursuing the lead, Saha’s name surfaced," said a sleuth of the central agency.
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CBI sources said documents related to the alleged recruitment scam were recovered from Saha’s residence and office. "We found five bags stashed with recruitment related documents in a bush adjacent to the boundary wall of his house as well. As we started interrogating Saha in the afternoon and asked him to give us his cellphones, he suddenly ran out of the room where he was being questioned and threw the gadgets into the pond," said a CBI officer.
Saha was questioned by the CBI sleuths for over 24 hours at his residence.
The CBI also raided five other places in Kolkata, East Midnapore and Birbhum districts on Saturday.
In its first charge sheet filed in September last year, the ED, which is also probing into the alleged irregularities along with the CBI, said it traced cash, jewellery and immovable property worth Rs 103.10 crore linked to former minister Chatterjee and his associate Arpita Mukherjee, who was also arrested.
At Friday’s rally, Shah referred to the seizure of around Rs 50 crore in cash from Arpita’s apartments, and said, "The ED had to hire two trucks to carry the seized cash. They money belonged to unemployed youth in Bengal. TMC leaders should be ashamed."
