The CBI, along with its supplementary chargesheet in connection with its probe into “iregularities” in the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) 2014, has submitted a transcription of a purported conversation between several of the accused, including Sujoy Krishna Bhadra, Kuntal Ghosh, Santanu Banerjee, Surajit Chandra and Aurobindo Roy.

The agency has claimed that several of the accused mentioned the name ‘Abhishek Banerjee’ around 70 times in total in connection with the teachers’ recruitment case. However, it is not specified who this ‘Abhishek Banerjee’ is.

This comes days after the CBI filed a supplementary chargesheet in the case in which it mentioned a name, “Abhishek Banerjee”. However, in that document as well, the agency did not mention any specific identity of this person.

However, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s lawyer Sanjay Basu then released a press statement on behalf of the TMC MP, saying, “The CBI’s politically motivated narrative is a blatant attempt to tarnish Abhishek Banerjee’s reputation.”

Basu told mediapersons on Friday, “The basic trite of law states that four people sitting together and accusing a fifth person does not make the fifth person an accused. Otherwise, anyone could falsely implicate an individual. In this case, the CBI has subtly floated the name ‘Abhishek Banerjee’, although it does not specify which Abhishek Banerjee it refers to.”

“While the chargesheet mentions the agency’s positions or accusations against others, nothing is mentioned before or after Abhishek’s name. It could be, say, someone named Abhishek Banerjee from Malda,” said Basu.