Congress functionary arrested in Karnataka police exam scam linked to PWD engineers exam fraud in 2021, finds probe

The fraud in the PWD engineers recruitment exam was discovered by the headmistress of a St Ann’s School in Bengaluru when she and an invigilator found a candidate Veeranna Gowda “talking in a low voice” during the exam. When the KPSC nodal officer at the exam centre was alerted and a check was carried out, it was found that the candidate had a bluetooth transmitter with him and was talking to an associate who was outside the examination centre to get the answers.

After he was arrested by the Annapoorneshwari Nagar police in Bengaluru on December 14, 2021, the candidate told the police that the arrangement for the fraud in the exam was done by R D Patil. The police also named Nagaraj Kamble, president of a training centre for the KPSC recruitment examination, in the case.

The Annapoorneshwari Nagar police filed a chargesheet in the case on April 5 this year but did not name R D Patil among the 12 accused. In March, the Kalaburagi police, in fact, registered a case against R D Patil for allegedly assaulting a businessman Basavaraj Patil by claiming that he had provided the Bengaluru police information about Patils’s role in the PWD exam fraud. According to the assault complaint by the businessman, the agent R D Patil bragged that he was wealthy enough to pay his way out of the recruitment fraud case filed against him in Bengaluru.

“We are aware of the involvement of the main accused in the past in similar cases and are looking at it closely as well,” a senior police official said.

In the ongoing CID probe into the scam in the police sub-inspectors recruitment exam, a school run by the former president of the BJP women’s unit in Kalaburagi, Divya Hagaragi (41), has been found to be one of the centres where candidates were helped in scoring high marks by invigilators and others on October 3, 2021.

The former BJP functionary has been absconding since the CID registered a case on April 9 on the basis of prima facie evidence of a student Veeresh N obtaining 121 marks in the exam despite answering only 21 out of 100 questions in an objective paper for 150 marks.

Seven candidates who took the PSI recruitment exam at the Jnana Jyothi school in Kalaburagi city, of which Divya Hagaragi is the owner and principal, have been arrested so far by the CID. Her husband Rajesh Hagaragi has also been arrested by the CID along with three teachers of the school for allegedly helping candidates fill up their OMR sheets for the objective portion of the exam after the candidates filled the few answers they knew.

On Tuesday, the CID arrested N V Sunil, a candidate who appeared for the exam at the Jnana Jyothi school and secured 127.5 marks in the objective test to obtain the 25th position for the Kalyana Karnataka region. The CID had earlier arrested six other candidates including the overall second rank winner for the region and the first rank winner for the region among in-service police candidates.