Supreme Court orders special court to decide bail plea by TMC's Kuntal Ghosh in 10 days

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed a Kolkata special court to expeditiously dispose of a bail plea of Trinamool Congress (TMC) youth wing leader Kuntal Ghosh in connection with a money-laundering case related to the 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 judge despite substantial hearings having taken place earlier.A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan also sought the response of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Ghosh's writ petition today and listed the matter next on October 17."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", it directed..Bail is rule and jail is exception even in PMLA cases: Supreme Court.Ghosh was arrested by the ED in January last year in the West Bengal job recruitment scam case.The case involves allegations that illegal recruitments were made to primary and secondary schools across West Bengal 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 the OMR Sheets.Several persons including the former 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..In his plea before the Supreme Court challenging a fresh hearing of his bail plea in the matter, Kuntal Ghosh had said,"The transfer of a bail application to another court or judge, after a substantial hearing has already taken place, resulting in the necessity for a de-novo hearing and fresh consideration by the new judge in a case where the trail has even not commenced, constitutes a violation of the fundamental right to a speedy trial guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.".Ghosh's plea was filed through Advocate Shilpa Singh and drawn by Advocates Balwant Singh Billowria and MS Khan..[Read order]