ED claims TMC youth leader's associate involved in 'job racket'

The Enforcement Directorate ED on Monday claimed before a PMLA court here that the arrest and seizure of documents from Ayan Sils possession in connection with its investigation in a school teacher recruitment scam indicated that he was also involved in a racket for giving jobs to ineligible candidates.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday claimed before a PMLA court here that the arrest and seizure of documents from Ayan Sil's possession in connection with its investigation in a school teacher recruitment scam indicated that he was also ''involved in a racket for giving jobs to ineligible candidates''. The agency claimed that the statement of a former leader of Trinamool Youth Congress, Santanu Banerjee, who was arrested earlier, revealed the alleged involvement of Sil in collection of huge amount from candidates in the name of providing jobs as teachers through the Teachers' Eligibility Test (TET) 2012 and TET 2014.

The ED claimed before the PMLA court that Sil was not only involved in the illegal collection of funds from candidates for teaching jobs, but was also running a well-oiled racket for giving jobs to ineligible candidates in various municipalities of West Bengal by manipulating their answer sheets in connivance with high-ranked officials. It claimed that Sil had floated ABS Infozon Pvt Ltd which participated in the recruitment processes for various posts in different municipalities. The ED claimed that the search of Sil's office at Salt Lake led to seizure of documents of candidates and filled up multiple choice answer sheets of candidates for the examinations to the posts of mazdoor, typist, etc.

The agency claimed that documents recovered from Sil disclose the collection and distribution of ''ill-gotten money to the tune of over Rs 50 crore''.

Sil, who is also a real-estate promoter, was arrested in the wee hours of Monday by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Praying for his ED custody of 14 days before the court, the agency's lawyers Phiroze Edulji and Abhijit Bhadra claimed that he has been non-cooperative and had not revealed his source of funds, besides giving evasive replies to mislead the investigation.

Sil's lawyer Sanjib Dan claimed that ABS was participating in the recruitment process through a proper tendering process.

Opposing the remand prayer of the ED, he claimed that Sil was innocent and was not connected with the offences alleged.

Hearing both the parties and considering the offences alleged, the Judge granted 13 days' custody of Sil to ED and directed that he be produced before the court again on April 1 with case diary and medical report.

The court directed that the accused will be medically examined every 48 hours.