The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Trinamool Congress (TMC) youth wing leader Kuntal Ghosh to move the Calcutta High Court for bail in the money laundering case related to the alleged school jobs-for-cash scam in West Bengal [Kuntal Ghosh v. Enforcement Directorate Kolkata Zone].
Ghosh had moved the top court opposing a fresh hearing of his bail plea by a new trial judge despite substantial hearings having taken place before another judge.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant, CT Ravikumar and Ujjal Bhuyan disposed of the plea and allowed him to approach the Calcutta High Court. The High Court was directed to dispose of the matter speedily, preferably within four weeks.
"Go to the (Calcutta) High Court. We will ask them to hear expeditiously," the Bench said.
Ghosh's plea was filed through Advocate Shilpa Singh and drawn by Advocates Balwant Singh Billowria and MS Khan.
The Supreme Court had on October 1 directed a special court in Kolkata to expeditiously dispose of Ghosh's bail plea. Subsequently, the lower court on October 8 denied him bail.
In January last year, Ghosh was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the West Bengal job recruitment scam case.
The case involves allegations that illegal recruitments were made to primary and secondary schools across the State during the recruitment process of 2016.
The Supreme Court had in May stayed a Calcutta High Court order that cancelled close to 24,000 jobs provided under the 2016 recruitment process by the West Bengal School Service Commission, which is being probed by the ED.
Over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. It had been alleged before the High Court that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating OMR sheets.
Several persons, including the former State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and TMC party MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha, are behind bars for their alleged involvement in the matter, along with suspended TMC leaders like Santanu Kundu.