Apprehending that crucial evidence could be tampered with or destroyed, the lawyers representing Sabina Yasmin and Babita Sarkar, petitioners in the SSC recruitment scam, met Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay on May 18. Their apprehension was not misplaced as Siddhartha Majumdar, the incumbent chairperson of the scam-tainted SSC, had resigned that day. Anything could happen in the intervening hours before or after his successor IAS officer Subhra Chakraborty took over the reins.
In what would go down in judicial history of the country as an unprecedented move, the Calcutta High Court judge held a special hearing that evening.
After concluding the hearing that began at 10:45 and closed shortly before midnight, Justice Gangopadhyay ordered the CBI, investigating the scam, to immediately secure the Acharya Bhawan in Salt Lake with assistance from Central forces. Directing the CBI to keep a “hawk eye” vigil on the room housing SSC data, the judge ordered the agency to padlock the room, secure CCTV footages and keep the SSC office premises off limits, forbidding entry into the building, till 1 pm the next day.
The SSC recruitment scam has become a test case, where Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay has not only ruffled feathers of the ruling TMC government but also gone against his own brother judges. A year back when he ordered a CBI inquiry into the recruitment scam, after multiple petitions seeking an inquest into various irregularities in the recruitment of teachers and thousands of Group D employees were filed in the Calcutta High Court, it did not go down well with ruling TMC workers.
Lawyers of the TMC legal cell gherao his court-room, staging a sit-in there. But little they realized that Justice Gangopadhyay was made of a different mettle. Instead of bucking down, the judge politely, yet firmly, told the protesting lawyers, “You can hold a gun to my head. I am willing to die, but the Court will not remain silent on corruption.”
Passing a stern order after another stern order, the judge did not like the mollycoddling way some other benches of the High court were dealing with scam related petitions, which were being filed with the sole intention of derailing the investigation and weakening the case in the court. He went hammer and tongs after a Division Bench of the High Court who had directed to his court to accept documents in ‘sealed cover’, and when some of his orders were stayed by Division Benches, Justice Gangopadhyay wrote to Chief Justices of Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court of India seeking their intervention in the matter.
The judge had ordered former SSC adviser Shanti Prasad Singh to submit details of his movable and immovable assets of the. The order was, however, stayed by a Division Bench.
Justice Gangopadhyay has forced two powerful ministers, allegedly involved in the recruitment scam, in the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government Paresh Adhikari and Partha Chatterjee to face CBI inquiry and they have already been grilled by the investigators at the Nizam Palace. He ordered the dismissal of Anikta Adhikari, daughter of the Minister of School Education, from service and recovery of 41 months’ salary as she was appointed in violation of rules.
Ironically, Justice Gangopadhyay was a lawyer representing SSC. He began his career as an officer with the West Bengal Civil Service, the recruiting agency of various cadres of civil servants in the state, but gave up the job to study law. He worked as a lawyer for 10 years fighting important lawsuits and practiced as a public prosecutor in the Calcutta High Court before he was elevated to the bench as an additional judge in May 2018. He was made a permanent judge of the high court two years later in July 2020.
However, the unfolding SSC recruitment scam is not the only case where he has made delivery of justice a cause célèbre, with thousands of candidates looking up to him to get them what they deserve, the government job for which they burnt midnight oil and have been waiting to come by since 2016.
Deliverance in the form of justice came to 76-years-old Shyamoli Das, who had been fighting a legal battle for 36 years to get her dues.
Justice Gangopadhyay ordered the department concerned to release 25 years salary to her along with arrears. In yet another case, he ordered the dismissal of a school headmaster from service who had withheld a teacher’s salary unlawfully. Similarly, Justice Gangopadhyay came to the rescue of an ailing school teacher was, who had been denied transfer on health grounds.
Now, with Justice Gangopadhyay overseeing the progress of the CBI investigation into the SSC recruitment scam and bringing those involved to book one by one, the commoners find in him a saviour, restoring their faith in judiciary.