Bengal school job case: Calcutta HC denies bail to Partha Chatterjee, four others

Kolkata, Dec 24 (IANS) A single judge bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Tuesday, denied bail to former West Bengal Education Minister and ex-Trinamool Congress general secretary Partha Chatterjee and four others in the cash-for-school job case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Although the hearing in the matter was concluded on December 17, the single judge bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty reserved its judgement. Earlier on November 20, a division bench of Justice Arijit Bandopadhya and Justice Apruba Sinha Roy delivered a split judgement on the bail petition by Chatterjee and eight other accused in the case.

While Justice Bandopadhya pronounced in favour of bail for Chatterjee and eight other accused in the case, Justice Sinha Roy rejected the same for Chatterjee and four others.

Thereafter the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice allotted the case to the bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty.

While denying the bail petition on Tuesday, Justice Chakraborty observed that although “bail is the rule” and “jail is the exception”, in his particular case the charges are extremely serious.

According to him, the entire school education system gets destabilised if ineligible candidates are given the responsibility of teaching. He also observed that giving school jobs to ineligible candidates against money is also a kind of fraud with those getting jobs honestly after qualifying in the examination.

Justice Chakraborty also questioned why the state government is reluctant to give approval for the beginning of the trial process against the state government employees involved in the alleged scam, which proves that the state government still has connections with the accused.

Two parallel cases are going on against the former state minister, one registered by the CBI and the other by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

Chatterjee was arrested in July 2022 by the ED after huge amounts of cash and gold were recovered from the twin residences of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee. Since then, a solitary cell at Presidency Central Correctional Home has become his abode, and his bail petitions one after another have been rejected in different courts. Mukherjee has been in judicial custody since then.

Recently, a division bench of the Supreme Court granted conditional bail to Chatterjee in the ED-registered case. However, recently the CBI also showed him as arrested in the same case following which Chatterjee’s counsel approached the Calcutta High Court with the bail petition.

–IANS

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