The CBI has written to Google seeking information about two websites that appear to be fake replicas of the West Bengal School Service Commission’s website and were allegedly used to lure prospective candidates to pay hefty amounts for jobs in state-aided schools in West Bengal.
In an email to Google, a senior officer of the central agency said the CBI had sought information on the email accounts that were used to open these websites, the IP addresses of the devices which were used to open and later disable them.
Since these websites could be accessed, even if temporarily, using the Google search engine, the details would be available from the company, the officer said, explaining why the mail was sent.
Investigations into the alleged recruitment irregularities have revealed that two websites of the school service commission would flash names of candidates who had appeared for the Teachers’ Eligibility Test along with their roll numbers, and a column next to each would show “qualified”.
Candidates who would allegedly pay a big amount as “advance” for permanent jobs in state-aided schools would find their names featured on the list on each of these two fake websites, investigators said.
Each of the websites looked like a replica of the original one of the school service commission, except for minute differences. “Candidates would mistake them for genuine websites of the commission,” a CBI officer said.
While the commission’s original website ends with “.in”, the fake ones ended with “.com”. After a few days, the websites disappeared from their respective domains and candidates looking to re-affirm their names by typing their roll numbers would not be able to access them, officers said.
“We would like to find out whether these domains were purchased or hired for a temporary period of time and under whose name they were registered,” said a senior officer.
CBI officers said they were trying to find out whether anyone in the WBSSC was involved in the floating of these websites. Kuntal Ghosh, suspended Trinamul leader now in custody in connection with the job scam, had used these websites to collect huge amounts of money from several candidates, the officers said.