New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS): The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked a special CBI court to decide, within 10 days, the bail plea of Kuntal Ghosh, a prime accused in the multi-crore cash-for-school-job case in West Bengal.
A bench, headed by Justice Surya Kant, directed the special court to take up the bail matter on a day-to-day basis.
"Special CBI Court, which has been notified as a Special Court under Section 43 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, is directed to take up the bail matter of the petitioner on day to day basis, and decide the same within 10 days and send a compliance report," the bench, also comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, ordered.
Suspended Trinamool Congress youth wing leader Kuntal Ghosh came into the limelight last year after he accused Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials of putting pressure on him to name party General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee in the school job case. He had written letters to a local police station and a judge of a special court for the PMLA, accusing the probe agencies on this matter.
The CBI charge sheet mentioned that Ghosh designed a fake website of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) to arrange fake counselling and used it to upload a list of "target" candidates. He also created a fake email ID through which he used to send "do not reply" emails to such "target" candidates informing them about being shortlisted for the counselling, a CBI official said.
"None of these candidates were actually selected and the accused was just duping them for extracting money for them. So in a way, he opened a two-way corruption channel, arranging jobs against cash and duping candidates," the official added.