In a bid to retrieve the destroyed Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets that were used in the recruitment test of primary teachers for government schools in West Bengal, CBI officials are now sending the servers and other electronic devices seized from the office of S Basu & Company for forensic examination.

S Basu & Company is the outsourced agency that was responsible for providing the OMR sheets for the recruitment test and preserving them.

Sources said that after search operations by the CBI and software experts at the office of S Basu & Company for three consecutive days from Tuesday, some initial evidence of data erasure was found.

After spotting the erased data the investigating officials decided to seize the servers and some other electronic devices of the firm and send them for forensic examination to gather more evidence.

Sources said that the recovery of OMR data is crucial for the central agency officials since these sheets are vital evidence of the irregularities in the school job recruitment case.

With the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) having already informed the Calcutta High Court that the OMR data was destroyed on instructions of Trinamool Congress legislator and former Board president Manik Bhattacharya, recovery of the data has become extremely important for the CBI.

The CBI is taking the help of independent cyber and software experts following an instruction from the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge Bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha.

Justice Mantha also directed WBBPE to bear the entire expenditure for hiring the services of the independent experts by the central agency.