Mondal shares room with two WBSSC scam accused in CBI custody

KOLKATA: Much to his disliking, Trinamool Congress strongman and party's Birbhum district president, Anubrata Mondal, from Saturday night had to share his room in Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody with two prime accused in the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam - Santi Prasad Sinha and Ashok Saha.

Sinha, the former convener of West Bengal School Service Commission's (WBSSC) secretary and Saha, the former WBSSC secretary, are both under CBI custody over their alleged involvement in the multi-crore WBSSC scam.

Till Saturday afternoon, Mondal was sharing a completely separate room in the CBI's Nizam Palace office in central Kolkata. However, from Saturday night he was asked to share the room with Sinha and Saha.

When asked about this change in arrangement, a CBI official gave an extremely interesting answer. "The space in our office is not unlimited and hence we cannot afford the luxury of allotting separate room for separate accused persons in our custody. At the same time, we also have to keep some free and reserved space for probable guests in the coming days," he said. However, he did not clarify on what he actually meant by the term 'probable guests'.

He also added that keeping the three together also facilitates the process of keeping close watch on all of them at the same time.

The new arrangement is being vehemently disliked by Mondal and he also requested the central agency sleuths not to implement the changes arrangement. Sources said that he also complained that this would hamper his privacy. However, his disliking was not given any importance by the CBI officials.

Sinha or Saha did not raise any objection over the changed arrangement. Sources further said that since the time the three had been housed in the same room, Mondal did not interact with them even once on any matter.