The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Kuntal Ghosh, a Trinamul youth leader from Hooghly, for his role in school recruitment scam from his Chinar Park apartment in New Town on Saturday morning.
He was arrested after ED officials questioned him for over 24 hours during a raid and search operation on his properties.
Senior officials of the ED, which has been probing the money trail in the alleged irregularities in recruitment in state-run schools, said Ghosh was not cooperating with the agency when he was being questioned for his alleged links.
“There are reasons to believe that Kuntal Ghosh was in the know of the amount that exchanged hands for illegal appointments at different levels in state-run schools. We have received several key documents from his possession,” said an ED official.
Ghosh’s arrest rides an allegation made earlier by Tapas Mondal claiming that the youth leader from Balagarh in Hooghly had received over Rs 19.44 core from different candidates by promising them jobs in state-run schools between 2016 and 2021.
Mondal is a close associate of Manik Bhattacharya, the former West Bengal Primary Education Board chairman, who was arrested in October.
Mondal was president of the association of Bengal’s 625 private BEd and diploma in elementary education (DElEd) colleges and institutions till he was named in ED’s second charge sheet in the case in December.
A week back while facing CBI interrogators Mondal is said to have alleged that Ghosh took Rs 19.44 crore from 325 job seekers from his institutes.
On Saturday, Ghosh alleged that his arrest was a result of a conspiracy that Mondal hatched and denied accepting money from any candidate. “I have been framed because Tapas Mondal demanded Rs 50 lakh from me and I didn’t pay,” Ghosh said on his way out of his apartment with ED officers.
Mondal countered Ghosh’s allegation saying he had indeed demanded money from him because he wanted those who have been cheated should get their hard-earned money back.
At the Bankshall court, where Ghosh was produced later on Saturday, his lawyers argued that ED had not recovered any amount during the search operation.
They pleaded for his bail but the court remanded him in ED custody.