Kolkata: Vice-President of West Bengal State BJP Jay Prakash Majumdar was arrested by the Bidhannagar North police on Saturday evening after a marathon grilling for eight hours in connection with a complaint alleging that he had taken Rs 7.20 lakhs in cash from the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) candidates on the false promise of providing them jobs.
Majumdar's arrest comes as a blow to the BJP which has been training its guns on the ruing Trinamool Congress over corruption in wake of the arrest of two Trinamool MPs in Lok Sabha: Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal in the Rose Valley chit fund scam.
Majumdar has been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code in the case, said Santosh Pandey, deputy commissioner of police (detective department) of the Bidhannagar City Police.
Majumdar who was earlier with the Congress, switched to the BJP in September of 2014. A TET candidate Arup Ratan Roy lodged the complaint against him with the Bidhannagar North police station on August 28 last year. A case (185/16) on cheating and two other charges was intiated by the police against Majumdar.
Roy alleged, "When we were organising a protest demanding recruitment in Salt Lake, Majumdar, accompanied by Pradip Bhattacharya, visited our dharna manch. He was in the Congress then. He demanded Rs 10 lakhs from us assuring that he would get us teachers' jobs after fighting it out through a case in the Supreme Court."
He added, "Majumdar claimed that the money would be used to fight the case. We paid him Rs 7.20 lakhs in his office in two installments. The first installment was Rs 3.20 lakhs while the second one was Rs 4 lakhs. We collected the money from amongst ourselves by issuing tokens of Rs 50, 100, 200."
Roy elaborated, "Later when we met Majumdar and reminded him about him about his promise, he threatened us showing a gun and denied of taking money from us. We then lodged a complaint to state BJP president Dilip Ghosh. But no action was taken. Helpless we lodged the complaint against him."
Majumdar was summoned twice the cops of the Bidhannagar North police station for questioning. He however avoided. The Bengal BJP vice-president was again summoned on Saturday. At around 11.30 am Majumdar appeared at the Bidhannagar North police station and faced questioning by senior officers.
But he failed to explain why he took money leading to his arrest. Majumdar will be produced at the Bidhannagar Court on Sunday.
