The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday, 25th August, arrested Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA from the the Burwan constituency, Jiban Krishna Saha from his home in Andi, Murshidabad. The arrest came after a raid at his residence that lasted for more than five hours, as part of the ongoing probe into the School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam.
According to ED officials, Saha refused to cooperate during the search. In an attempt to dodge investigators, he jumped over a wall and even threw his mobile phone into nearby bushes. The phone was later recovered.
This is not the first time he has tried to hide evidence. Back in 2023, during a CBI raid, the MLA had reportedly thrown two of his phones into a pond.
Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) IT cell chief Amit Malviya also reacted to the incident. Sharing a post on X, Malviya said, “TMC MLA Jiban Krishna Saha’s clownish Bollywood-style escape, leaping over walls and throwing his phone into a pond to dodge the ED, is nothing but a flop scene directed by Mamata Banerjee herself!”
TMC MLA Jiban Krishna Saha’s clownish Bollywood-style escape, leaping over walls and throwing his phone into a pond to dodge the ED, is nothing but a flop scene directed by Mamata Banerjee herself!
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) August 25, 2025
•Every major scandal in the state bears the unmistakable fingerprints of Mamata… pic.twitter.com/3u4FbOxMZN
Relatives’ house also raided
The agency also carried out raids at the homes of Saha’s relatives. His in-laws’ residence in Raghunathganj, Murshidabad, and Maya Saha’s home, a Trinamool councillor from Ward 9 in Sainthia municipality, was also searched in Birbhum. Maya is reportedly Jiban Saha’s maternal aunt. She later said she cooperated with officials and was asked to appear before them on 28th August.
In Purulia, ED teams searched the house of the in-laws of the accused Prasanna Roy, who is currently in jail. Roy is suspected of playing the role of a “middleman” in the recruitment scam. Earlier, the agency had seized several of his properties. There are also allegations that three of his sisters-in-law managed to get jobs as primary school teachers a few years ago, raising further questions.
Apart from this, ED officials searched the home of a bank employee in Andi Mahish village, Murshidabad, suggesting that the scope of the investigation is expanding.
The SSC recruitment scam has already led to several arrests, and the latest developments show that investigators are now widening their net across West Bengal.
Bengal SSC Scam
The West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) case is one of the biggest recruitment scams, carried out under the watch of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government.
The recruitments were made in 2016 for positions of Assistant Teachers for Classes 9-12 and non-teaching staff in Groups C and D. Written examinations, interviews/ personality tests were conducted as part of the initiative to fill the vacancies.
The WBSSC had tasked a company named ‘Nysa Communications’ to scan the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets of the candidates and assess the results, which helped execute the recruitment scam.
From the very onset, the selection process was fraught with a lack of transparency. WBSSC did not upload a common list of candidates with their respective marks (both during the initial and final stages).
No age relaxations were granted during the exams in contravention of existing norms, which kickstarted the saga of writ petitions in court. One Baishakhi Bhattacharyya became the first to file a case against WBSSC in 2016.
By 2021, several discrepancies came to light in the manner in which 25,753 individuals were appointed by the WBSSC for the positions of Assistant Teachers and non-teaching staff.
