THE CRIMINAL Investigation Department of Karnataka Police has obtained a non-bailable warrant against a former BJP functionary from Kalaburagi region for alleged facilitation of cheating by candidates during a recruitment exam for the post of police sub-inspectors held last year. A school run by the former president of the BJP women's unit in Kalaburagi, Divya Hagaragi, 41, has been found so far to be one of the main exam centres where candidates were helped in scoring high marks by invigilators and others on October 3, 2021. Hagaragi 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 out of 150 marks in the recruitment exam despite answering 21 out of 100 questions. Seven candidates, who took the exam at Jnana Jyothi English School in Kalaburagi city, where Hagaragi is the owner and principal, have been arrested so far in connection with the recruitment exam scam. Hagaragi's husband Rajesh Hagaragi has also been arrested along with three teachers of the school for allegedly helping the candidates. On Tuesday, the CID arrested N V Sunil, a candidate who appeared for the exam at the school and secured 127.5 marks in the objective test to obtain 25th position for the Kalyana Karnataka region. The CID earlier arrested six other candidates, including the overall second-rank holder for the region and the first-rank holder for the region among in-service police candidates. The arrests were made after discrepancies were found between the original OMR sheet sent to the police recruitment cell and the carbon copies of the OMR sheets produced by the candidates before the CID during investigations, police sources said. The elusive former BJP functionary against whom the CID has obtained an arrest warrant has moved a court in Kalaburagi for anticipatory bail. Police sources said she was needed to be questioned in custody as there is evidence to indicate she was party to the cheating arrangement. Police sources said the CID has not ruled out the possibility of cheating in the police sub-inspector recruitment exam extending to other centres in Karnataka as well. The CID is looking at the OMR sheets of all 545 candidates who were selected from a total of 54,041 candidates who took the exam at 92 centres across Karnataka on October 3, 2021. The results were announced on January 19, 2022. The candidates who were helped to clear the exam allegedly paid Rs 20 lakh to Rs 70 lakh. One of the prime reasons that the CID police suspects that the exam scam is not restricted to the Kalaburagi region and the Jnana Jyothi English School is that fact a key suspect in the exam fraud – Rudragouda D Patil alias R D Patil, 38, a Congress block president for Afzalpur region of Kalaburagi district – has been allegedly involved in the past in exam rigging in Bengaluru as well. R D Patil, who was arrested last weekend with his brother Mahantesh Patil, was named in December 2021 as one of the accused in facilitating the use of a Bluetooth device by a candidate to receive answers during a recruitment exam for engineers for the Public Works Department conducted by the Karnataka Public Service Commission. Patil and Nagaraj Kamble, the president of a Kalaburagi exam training institution, obtained anticipatory bail in the case earlier this year. 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 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 obtain the right answers. After he was arrested on December 14, 2021, the candidate told the police that the arrangement for the fraud in the exam was done by R D Patil.
