Teacher recruitment scam: Clerk cries foul

NAGPUR: St Vincent Primary School teacher recruitment scam accused, Ignatius Bastian who had been working as a clerk (now under suspension) with the St Vincent Primary School (Medical Square) claims he is being framed. On March 22, TOI had brought to light the large scale scam.
The school management has been appointing unqualified teachers by giving them identities of those who had left and continued to draw their salaries from government grants for years.These fake teachers also withdrew money from the PF accounts of the genuine teachers.
The education department of Zilla Parishad (ZP) conducted an inquiry into the scam and indicted ten people. All the ten indicted person have been suspended. The ZP report claimed the school's clerk Ignatius Bastian was involved in the entire scam and that he also helped his wife to fraudulently withdraw money from another teacher's provident fund account.
However, speaking to TOI, Ignatius Bastian said, "I was only a clerk in the school with absolutely no power to appoint any teacher. There is no school in the entire country where a clerk has the authority to appoint teachers. All the appointments in this case were done by the management, and they are now conspiring against me". Ignatius further adds that he was unaware of fake teachers being appointed in the school and it came to his notice only when a letter from ZP arrived at his office.
The letter dated January 28, 2008, from the education department, mentioned that it has approved the 'name change' of total 12 female employees of the school. TOI verified that some of these were genuine name changes on account of marriage. However for the others, it was a cover-up to make sure that the names of unqualified teachers' matched with the identities they were using.
"The school management is making it look like I was the signing authority for everything. On the contrary everything in the school was handled by my brother, late D A Bastian. My brother had been the sole authority of the school from 1960s when the school was established. Now, after his death, a couple of years ago, certain family members are trying to frame me in this conspiracy," said Ignatius.
ZP initiated the investigation based on a complaint by former mayor Kalpana Pande. "I was surprised to read this investigation report in TOI. Even though I was the complainant I was neither called during the investigation process nor was I informed about it after its completion," said Pande.
When asked about this, Mahesh Karajgaonkar, deputy director of education (Nagpur division) said, "I am not aware about who the complainant is, as she did not file it when I was present in the office. My staff would probably know about it".
Meanwhile, Ignatius told TOI that he would challenge the ZP's investigation report which indicted him.