Dummy candidate racket: Documents sent to three central labs

“A large number of documents which contain handwritings and signatures of the dummy candidates and actual candidates have been sent to three central forensic laboratories in Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad for analysis. After we receive the reports, we will not only continue with the trial but also communicate to the government about these 49 serving employees recruited through the racket,” said Shankar Kengar, Superintendent of Police, CID, who is heading the SIT. “There are some instances where we have concrete information of dummy candidates appearing, but the related papers have not been found. It is mainly because the exam-conducting bodies concerned have not maintained the papers properly,” he added.

A 27-year-old Political Science graduate, Yogesh Jadhav from Nanded, who is preparing for the Civil Services examinations, had first unearthed the series of impersonations by filing several RTI applications, which led to the statewide probe by the CID SIT. He started digging into the cases, when he found several youths known to him had sold or mortgaged their ancestral land or houses to pay a middleman for their selection into government jobs.

The chargesheet filed by the SIT last year reveals how the racketeers bribed Anti Corruption Bureau officials to avoid inquiry and even went on to bribe CID handwriting experts to mislead the probe even after police investigations began into the racket. Sources said this was one reason why the documents were sent to central forensic labs.

In April last year, the state government formed the SIT after a direct intervention from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and it was given the mandate to probe into cases of dummy candidates, including many in Pune. As per primary estimate, the number of cases in which dummy candidates are suspected to have appeared is over 1,000. Several recruitments in departments like police, social welfare, secretariat, agriculture and women and child development are now under SIT scanner.

Behind each selected candidate, the racketeers were paid anywhere between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh and a significant chunk of the money went to the impersonators.