Kolkata: An employee of the West Bengal secretariat, who had given a clean chit to a pest control agency employee arrested on suspicion of hatching a conspiracy to burn the Writers` Buildings, was today suspended on the charge of wrong handling of the exercise.
State Home Department sources said the Registrar of Publications, Home Department, Bismay Roy, who had defended pest control agency employee Jyotirmoy Nandi, has been suspended and a departmental proceeding was on.
Roy`s clean chit to the man had deeply embarrassed the state government and state Home Secretary Basudeb Banerjee had asked for a departmental enquiry report on the incident.
"The arrested person has no malice or bad intention. He has been carrying out a routine pest control exercise for which he has been contracted by the Home Department. I even told the police this as they were interrogating him," Roy had said in the man`s defence earlier this month.
Roy was summoned by Basudeb Banerjee early this month at the relocated state secretariat `Nabanna`.
He had said, "I know him since long. Copy of the contract agreement regarding appointment of Nandi for pest control in the Writers` Buildings is with me. That day he did not have a gate pass to enter the Writers` Buildings and that is why an employee of my department accompanied him. He can`t do anything wrong. Kerosene is used for pest control and there is nothing new in it."
The Kolkata police arrested Nandi, an employee of a pest control agency on November 30 in connection with the alleged conspiracy.
An alarm was raised by a police constable on November 29 after finding files and books doused with kerosene lying in the Home Department`s publication office on the G-block of the building`s top floor.
