School job case: Calcutta HC denies protection to Abhishek Banerjee’s PA from coercive action

Kolkata, Oct 16 : The Calcutta High Court on Monday denied protection to Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjees personal assistant, Sumit Roy, from any coercive action in the multi-crore cash for school job case.

A single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh turned down Roys plea on this count.

Roy was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) sleuths at the agency’s Salt Lake office in the northern outskirts of Kolkata in connection with the case.

According to sources, Roy is being questioned in connection with a corporate entity whose name surfaced in the ED probe.

Over four hours have passed since he reached the ED office and his interrogation is still on.

The next hearing in the matter will be held on December 4.

The single- bench has asked ED to file a detailed affidavit in the matter to the court by then.

Meanwhile, a fresh arrest in the school job case was made on Monday by the sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe in the case.

The arrested person has been identified as Partha Sen, a top employee of M.Basu Roy & Company, the entity that supplied optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets for the written examinations for the school jobs.

Sources said that Sen has been arrested in connection with after the central agency sleuths secured specific clues against Sen about his alleged involvement in the tampering of the OMR sheets.

Last week, Abhishek Banerjee’s wife Rujira Narula Banerjee was interrogated by the ED for a marathon eight hours.

She was summoned in connection to her role as the erstwhile director of the corporate entity.

The probe agency had also summoned Abhishek Banerjee’s parents, but they did not appear.The Trinamool general secretary has been questioned by the ED and also by the CBI.He had recently submitted hard copies of documents related to his assets and property to the central agency sleuths.

src/shb