WBSSC recruitment scam: Bengal teacher commits suicide

Tumparani Mondal Parua (30), a teacher in a state-run school at Nandigram in West Bengal's East Midnapore district, committed suicide reportedly out of apprehension of her name being in the list of those teachers who are under the scanner in the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam.

Her hanging body was recovered from her residence late Sunday night.

The family members of the deceased have informed the local police that recently a list became viral containing the names of certain teachers whose names were reportedly under scrutiny in view of the different ongoing court cases in the Calcutta High Court relating to the teachers' recruitment. The list, that went viral, apparently had the name of the victim, which shattered her mentally.

The police have started an investigation in the matter and have sent the body for post-mortem.

As per records of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), Mondal Parua was selected as a teacher for Class 9 and 10 in 2016. In 2019 she joined the Debipur Milan Vidyapith school in Nandigram as a Bengali teacher. She was an original resident of the Burunda Village under Chandipur Police Station in East Midnapore district. She got married in 2014.

Initially, the local people perceived that the victim's name figured in the list of 186 names of "wrongly recommended" candidates published by the WBSSC on its website on Thursday night. However, later it was found that her name did not figure in the list of "wrongly recommended", and rather her apprehension of termination of services was due to the purported list that went viral.

The ED, along with the CBI, is currently probing the alleged multi-crore money laundering scam around the recruitment of teachers for state-sponsored schools in West Bengal as ordered by the Calcutta High Court.

The scam, allegedly steered by the former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee, revolves around recruiting teachers in exchange for money, which had incited widespread protests by candidates who appeared for the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) in June this year.

With inputs from IANS