The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team, probing the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment scam, on Thursday interrogated state education secretary, Manish Jain for around four hours.

CBI sources said that the probable link of the education secretary with recruitment irregularities is quite complicated. Earlier, when the CBI integrated former state education minister and Trinamul Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee, he denied knowledge about the formation of the expert committee for recruitment, which is perceived to have played the key role in these recruitment irregularities.

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However, sources said that when Chatterjee was told that the file pertaining to the formation of the expert committee contains his signature, he said that the particular file was forwarded to him by Jain.

“So, it became necessary for us to question Jain about whose instructions prompted him to forward the file to the then education minister,” a CBI source said.

Jain was also asked whether at the time of forwarding the said file to Chatterjee, he had knowledge about the purpose with which the expert committee was formed. He was also asked why he forwarded that file to the minister without being sure about the role to be played by the committee. The CBI sleuths also questioned him on whether there was any pressure on him to get the file cleared by Chatterjee.

CBI sources said that during the course of integration, the education secretary tried to avoid a number of questions. CBI will corroborate the information given by Jain with the statements of Chatterjee.

Meanwhile on Thursday, another team of CBI officials reached the data room of the WBSSC office at Salt Lake. They were accompanied by computer and software experts, who checked the data stored in the different computers at the WBSSC office.

CBI sources said that they believe that scanned copies of fake recommendation letters and fake panel lists are stored in some of these computers, and hence the experts will check each and every computer in the WBSSC office to track these scanned copies.