WBSSC scam: Middleman Prasanna Roy sent to 7 days CBI custody

KOLKATA: A special CBI court on Monday sent Prasanna Roy, the middleman arrested in connection with the alleged multi-crore West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) scam, to seven days of CBI custody, till September 5.

In his arguments, the CBI counsel said that the investigating officials have procured a list of individuals from Roy and they suspect these names are those of undeserving candidates appointed as teachers against hefty payments. CBI officials need to extract information from Roy as to who had instructed him to prepare this list and for that purpose, the agency officials require his custody for some more days, counsel argued.

Roy is married to a niece of former West Bengal Education Minister and Trinamool Congress Secretary General, Partha Chatterjee, who is currently in judicial custody following his alleged involvement in the scam.

In his argument, the CBI counsel also said that Roy always maintained a close coordination with former convenor of WBSSC's screening committee, Santi Prasad Singh, who is also in CBI custody now in connection with the scam. The CBI counsel also detailed the skyrocketing financial fortune of Roy in the period between 2014 and 2018, deemed to be the peak period of the teachers' recruitment scam with Chatterjee as the state Education Minister.

Meanwhile, CBI sources said that they have recovered certain documents from Roy's office, which indicate that shortly he was planning to enter film production business. "We suspect that venturing into film production was aimed at diverting the proceeds of the scam. We have also procured a list of the actors and actresses from his office. We are unable to divulge the names of actors and actresses now for the sake of further investigation," a CBI official said. (IANS)

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