Answer checking system rigged, racket has spread across state: Police

As many as 12 persons — including nine candidates who paid money to the racketeers, a policeman who acted as the middleman and two employees of a Pune-based private company — have already been arrested in connection to the scam. A total of 20 persons have been booked in the case. Police are now hunting for the mastermind of the scam, who is from Pune.

The Pune-based private company had been hired by police to put in place the OMR system during recruitment drives.

Superintendent of Police, Nanded, Chandrakishor Meena said they are taking a closer look at the result of a recent examination after they found that 13 candidates had scored exceptionally high marks: almost 90 out of 100. When the answer papers of these students have checked again, it was found that they had not done any calculations to answer any of the questions.

After questioning some of the candidates and conducting further investigation, police zeroed in on two police officials attached to the State Reserve Police Force, who were allegedly acting as middlemen in the racket. The investigation revealed that these police personnel had visited some of the candidates and promised them high marks in the recruitment exam in exchange of money. One of the two accused policemen, identified as Namdeo Dhakne, has been arrested and police are looking for the second one.

Explaining how the racket worked, a police official said, “The employees of the Pune-based software company, who were given the answer sheets of the candidates, used to fill up the blank spaces left by candidates during the exam. They used to mark the correct answers based on the key of the question papers we used to provide them. This was coordinated by the middlemen.”

The officer added, “The main racketeer of the scam is linked to the Pune company and the racket has spread across the state, in various recruitment exams and selection processes. The search for the mastermind is on. We are also probing a different modus operandi used by the same people to rig the process… they are suspected to have helped a large number of people for yet another recruitment process… we are zeroing in on that as well.”

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Criminal Investigation Department is currently probing a statewide dummy candidate racket that also has its roots in Nanded. The SIT has, till now, verified the identities of 49 government employees posted across Maharashtra who managed to get the jobs after ‘dummy candidates’ appeared for them in the recruitment exams. As many as 15 of them were arrested on March 6.