Bengal job scam: Actor Bonny Sengupta appears before ED, claims TMC leader helped buy car as payment for events

Apart from bookish knowledge teachers are supposed to instill ethics and values among children, which shape their future. But amidst call for reforms in India's education system, corruption has creeped into the process to recruit teachers. In the West Bengal teachers' recruitment scam, reports have revealed that Trinamool Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh paid for a luxury car owned by actor Bonny Sengupta.

Actor calls it payment for events

The Bengali actor, who had joied the BJP in 2021, has appeared before the Enforcement Directorate to answer questions about his alleged involvement in the scandal. He has denied claims about Ghosh transferring as much as Rs 45 lakh to an automobile agency for the car. The car had later been sold by Sengupta to a businessman Souvik Mukherjee back in December 2021.

But Sengupta claims that Ghosh had transferred the money as payment for 20 events that he attended for the leader. The actor claims that he first met Ghosh at a show in 2017, when the TMC leader offered to produce a film with him. Sengupta added that after going for more than 20 events, he asked Ghosh to make a single transfer to his car account.

Current owner of the car a lose end

As for Mukherjee, the security at his residence claims that he hasn't been seen for the past five months, after he took his father away from the flat. The West Bengal teacher recruitment scam was allegedly pulled off under TMC's Partha Chatterjee as Education Minister, and involved sidelining eligible candidates to hire those who paid Rs 5-RS 15 lakh in bribes.

The West Bengal job scam is one among multiple such scandals hitting the education sector in recent times, including alleged corruption in the recruitment of as many as 69,000 teachers in Uttar Pradesh.