WB teacher recruitment scam: Supreme Court refuses to stay probe against Abhishek Banerjee

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to interfere with the Calcutta High Court's order allowing the CBI and the ED to interrogate Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee in the alleged West Bengal school jobs scam.

A bench of CJI D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha said that the central probe agency has an independent right to probe and the court cannot stultify the investigation in the case.

"We are not going to interfere with the impugned order as this would stultify the investigation. Petitioner can avail the available remedies under the law," the bench said in its order.

The top court also said that the high court was correct in not passing the direction to prevent the investigation from being carried out in the alleged multi-crore teacher recruitment scam.

On May 18 this year, the high court’s single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha upheld Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay’s order for central agency probe and also imposed a cost of Rs 25 lakh on Banerjee, the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, for wasting the time of the court by way of filing a recall application.

Banerjee then challenged that single-judge bench order of the high court before the Supreme Court. In an interim direction, the apex court on May 26 stayed the part of the order imposing cost on the senior Trinamool leader.

The central agency probe against Abhishek Banerjee in the school recruitment case was originally ordered by the high court’s single-judge bench of Justice Gangopadhyay. Later the matter was assigned to the single-judge bench of Justice  Sinha following an order of the Supreme Court. The top court took strong exception to Justice Gangopadhyay's interview to a news channel in connection with Banerjee, even as a case concerning Banerjee was being heard by him.