In its probe into the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has found WhatsApp conversations that may have indicated that West Bengal's primary teachers' written examination question papers were leaked in advance to select candidates who attempted the exam in 2016. According to sources, the youth Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh, who was arrested by the ED from his home on January 21, was primarily responsible for the selective leak of question papers.
The probe agency has also recovered Whatsapp chats which indicated that Ghosh enjoyed the patronage of former state education minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee.
The central agency officials have also found copies of the admit cards of several candidates who showed up for the 2016 primary teacher recruitment examination among the documents that were taken from Ghosh's home. The names of 35 people were discovered by ED sleuths, all of whom are currently employed by various schools after they paid the jailed youth leader to get jobs as instructors in state-run schools. To move the investigation further, each and every one of them will be questioned. "The recruitment scam seems to be in multiple layers, which again have sub-layers involving multiple players and multiple angles. The uncovering of one layer is leading to other layers. That's why the investigation process is getting prolonged," said a legal associate of ED, stated the report by IANS.
When the ED sleuths noted that candidates with really poor academic records scored exorbitantly in the recruitment exam, it was determined that question papers had been leaked to select candidates. According to sources, the scores on their optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets did not justify the grades they received in their academic exams.
