The Enforcement Directorate on Monday arrested Trinamool Congress MLA Jibankrishna Saha from his residence in Burwan block of West Bengal’s Murshidabad district following a raid lasting nearly five hours in connection with the investigation into the School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam.
Saha, who represents the Burwan Assembly constituency, was taken into custody after he made an attempt to escape by jumping the boundary wall of his house and even threw his mobile phone into the bushes, agency officials said.
The phone was recovered, it is learnt.
Videos and pictures of the raids showed a drenched MLA being taken away by a team of officials from a place marked with vegetation and trash lying around.
The ED said Saha was not cooperating with the investigators.
Saha’s arrest comes amid a series of coordinated raids by the ED across West Bengal in the recruitment scam case.
Simultaneous searches were also conducted at multiple locations in Birbhum and Purulia districts, including Saha’s in-laws’ house in Murshidabad’s Raghunathganj area. A search was underway at the house of Maya Saha, a Trinamool councillor from ward 9 in Birbhum district’s Sainthia. Maya Saha is the maternal aunt of Jibankrishna Saha, it is learnt.
An ED team raided the house of the in-laws of Prasanna Roy, an accused in the SSC hiring scam who is currently in jail, in Purulia district. The agency has previously seized several properties of Roy who is accused of acting as a “middleman” in the recruitment process.
It is alleged that three of Roy’s sisters-in-law secured primary school teacher’s jobs around the same time. It was unclear if the current raid is directly linked to these appointments.
Searches were also being conducted at the house of a bank employee in Andi Mahish village of Murshidabad.
Earlier, Saha was arrested by the CBI in 2023 for his alleged links to the “scam” and later released. The ED’s money laundering case stems from an FIR registered by the CBI, which was directed by the Calcutta High Court to carry out investigation into alleged irregularities in the hiring of group ‘C’ and ‘D’ staff, assistant teachers of Classes 9 to 12 and primary teachers.
The ED had earlier arrested former state education minister Partha Chatterjee, his alleged associate Arpita Mukherjee, TMC MLA and ex-president of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education Manik Bhattacharya, apart from some others in this case.
Chatterjee was suspended by the TMC after his arrest by the ED.
A total of four chargesheets have been filed by the ED in this case so far.
An ex-teacher, made poll debut in 2021
Saha, who hails from a business family, started his career as an assistant teacher at a state-run primary school in 2006 during the Left Front rule in the state. In 2012, he secured a job in a high school via the state School Service Commission (SSC), and joined Debagram High School in Birbhum district.
He is believed to have become active in local politics around the same time and used to be a regular at blood donation camps and cultural events in Murshidabad. He would also share the stage with local leaders from the TMC and the BJP, it is learnt.
He was also known as a close associate of TMC’s Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal, who was also arrested in a cattle-smuggling case. Mondal was released on bail.
Saha contested from the Burwan Assembly seat on TMC ticket in 2021 and won by defeating Amiya Kumar Das of the BJP by a margin of 2,749 votes.
— PTI inputs