Justice Amrita Sinha of Calcutta High Court on Friday modified her September 29 order and allowed Enforcement Directorate (ED) officer Mithilesh Mishra to probe all alleged financial irregularities in Bengal except the school job scam.
The order came a day after the ED had filed an appeal before Calcutta High Court requesting a revision of Justice Sinha's order to remove Mishra from all investigations into alleged financial frauds being undertaken by the agency in the state.
On Friday, Justice Sinha heard the appeal in-camera. Only lawyers of the petitioner and the respondent were allowed to join the proceedings.
The joint director of the ED took part in the proceedings virtually from Delhi. The joint director informed the judge that Mishra was a "very competent officer of the department" who has been part of several important cases.
The joint director requested the judge to allow Mishra to handle cases related to financial irregularities in Bengal, except the alleged irregularities in recruitments for government-aided schools.
The judge had categorically expressed her reservations about Mishra in regard to the school job scam.
After hearing the joint director, Justice Sinha modified her earlier order.
On Thursday, Mishra had filed an appeal before Calcutta High Court challenging Justice Sinha's order. As the central agency's revision prayer was heard by Justice Sinha on Friday, sources in the court said the appeal filed by Mishra would become "infructuous".
Last month, while hearing the case related to the alleged corruption in school hiring, Justice Sinha had directed Mishra, who was then the investigating officer in the case, to be present in the court on September 25 and place a report on the assets of the directors of Leaps and Bounds, a company whose CEO is said to be Trinamul Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee.
The ED had said it suspected that the money paid by candidates who had got school jobs illegally was circulated through this company. After going through the reports placed by Mishra, the judge observed that Banerjee had shown only three LIC policies as his assets.
The judge issued an order directing the ED chief to immediately remove Mishra as the investigating officer in the recruitment probe and also from all other financial cases that were being investigated by the ED in Bengal.
The central agency filed a petition requesting the judge to revise the order and at least allow Mishra to conduct the investigation in the other cases.