PSI recruitment scam: Six rank winners among 12 arrested for exam fraud including another candidate arrested in Kalaburgi

Dr B Thomas (Special correspondent) 

The CID probing PSI recruitment scam arrested sunil Kumar after documents verification by the officials found that he is one of the beneficiary.

Sunil Kumar from Kalaburgi had attended his exam in the Jnana jyothi centre which is the now under the CID radar for carrying out irregularities and helping all the candidates to secure highest ranks in the list.

Sunil Kumar according to the officials was summoned along with others to submit the documents for verification.

Even before one of the accused arrested in this case confessed that Sunil Kumar is his candidates .

The candidates OMR sheet verification proved his involvement based on which he was arrested .

The CID officials camped in the Kalaburgi arrested as many as 17 persons.However the kingpins are still on the run.

As many as 11 of nearly 500 candidates who wrote the police sub-inspector recruitment examination last year with the Jnana Jyoti English School as their examination centre were chosen for recruitment to the police department earlier this year.

However, a scam in the recruitment process emerged after a few candidates who wrote the exam discovered that some of those chosen for recruitment from Kalaburagi had answered as few as 21 questions in the objective portion of the test but mysteriously ended up scoring as much as 121 marks out of 150 in the objective portion of the test which has 100 questions.

The six candidates arrested over the exam scam so far are Chetan Nandgaon (second rank), Veeresh N (seventh rank),Praveen Kumar (ninth rank), Vishal S (15th rank) and Arun Patil (17th rank) who were among 67 candidates selected in the provisional list under the merit list for the Kalyana Karnataka region (the backward Hyderabad-Karnataka region located in the north Karnataka),

The CID probe has so far led to the arrest of three teachers from the Jnana Jyothi school who allegedly filled out the OMR answer sheets for some of the students after the exam.

Three more teachers and the headmaster of the school Kashinath have sought bail along with the principal, the former BJP functionary Divya Hagaragi.

The scam is alleged to have been masterminded at the local level in Kalaburagi by a contractor and local Congress politician R D Patil and his brother Mahantesh.

A Congress MLA from the region Priyank Kharge has questioned the police over the continuance of the head of the recruitment cell in his existing position despite the emergence of the recruitment scam.