Kolkata, Nov 26
A special court in Kolkata on Tuesday granted custody of Santu Gangopadhyay and Santanu Bandopadhyay, two Trinamool Congress leaders to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The leaders have allegedly acted as middlemen in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.
On Tuesday, only a single-judge bench of the Calcutta High granted conditional bail to Bandopadhyay in the case filed in the matter against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which had been conducting a parallel probe along with CBI in the school job case.
However, before he could be released he was been taken back into custody by the CBI.
Gangopadhyay was arrested by the CBI officials on Monday night hours after Arpita Mukherjee, a close associate of former West Bengal Education Minister and Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee, was released on bail in Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in Kolkata.
Gangopadhyay is also a close confidant of Chatterjee.
Arpita Mukherjee was arrested by the ED officials in July 2022 and its officials recovered huge cash and gold from her two residences while Partha Chatterjee was arrested on the same day.
Meanwhile, the CBI had to present another prime accused in the case Sujay Krishna Bhadra at the special to seek his custody.
However, Bhadra, who is in judicial custody now after being arrested by ED last year, could not be produced at the court as he complained of acute chest pain.
The judge of the special court directed the CBI to ensure the presence of Bhadra at the court, physically or virtually, on November 28.