Kolkata, Sep 21 — Santu Gangopadhyay, a Kolkata-based businessman accused in the multi-crore school recruitment scam in West Bengal, has approached the Enforcement Directorate (ED) seeking to become an approver in the case, days after making a similar request to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Gangopadhyay had made a similar plea to the CBI on September 12 to become an approver in the case.
Both the CBI and the ED had been conducting parallel probes in the school job case during the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress regime in West Bengal. Sources aware of the development said that in his letter to the ED, Gangopadhyay named a couple of top Trinamool Congress leaders as the mastermind behind the alleged multi-crore scam.
In the letter, Gangopadhyay also claimed that despite being willing to divulge secrets in the school job scam much earlier, he was forced to remain silent because of a life threat during the previous Trinamool Congress government regime.
Now, as the Kolkata-based businessman claimed to the CBI, with the change of government in West Bengal after the Assembly elections earlier this year, Gangopadhyay gained confidence to reveal everything to the central probe agency, and hence he pleaded to become an approver.
Named in the charge sheet of the CBI in the case of recruitment of primary teachers in the state-run schools, Gangopadhyay was arrested earlier. However, he is currently out on bail.
He was known as an extremely close confidant of former West Bengal Education Minister and former Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee, who had also been in jail for more than three years because of his involvement in the school job case. Chatterjee is also out on bail.
Sources said that in his communications to both the ED and the CBI, Gangopadhyay alleged that he and another accused, Kuntal Ghosh, had delivered money collected through the recruitment racket to a senior Trinamool Congress leader.