CBI arrests middleman in WBSSC scam

In a late evening development on Wednesday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths probing the multi-crore West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) scam, arrested an alleged middleman.

The arrested person was identified as Pradip Singh and according to CBI sources, he acted as a middleman between the scamsters and the candidates.

This is the fifth arrest in this connection and the third by the CBI sleuths. Sources said that the arrested person was responsible for collecting money from the candidates and ferrying them to the politically influential people as well as some office bearers of the WBSSC, under whose supervisionm the irregularities happened for a long time. The central agency sleuths will present him at a special CBI court on Thursday.

Earlier the CBI sleuths arrested Santi Prasad Sinha, the former convenor of the WBSSC's screening committee, deemed to be the epicenter of the entire scam and Ashok Saha, the former Secretary of the commission. Both are in CBI custody currently.

Prior to that last month, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested former West Bengal Education Minister and Trinamool Congress Secretary General, Partha Chatterjee and his aide and purported partner in crime, Arpita Mukherjee in the same case. Huge cash and gold recovery was made from two residences of Arpita Mukherjee then. Both are in judicial custody now.

On Wednesday only, the CBI sleuths conducted raid and search operations at the residences and office of North Bengal University (NBU) Vice Chancellor, Subiresh Bhattacharya. He was the Chairman of WBSSC in the period between 2014 and 2018, with Chatterjee as the Education Minister, when the teachers' recruitment scam purportedly took place.