OMR scam: Probing possibility of collusion between officials and racketeers, say Pune police

The duo has been remanded to police custody till May 14. “Based on the primary probe, we suspect that some SRPF officials or staffers, who were part of the process, were hand-in-glove with the accused. Such crimes are not possible without the involvement of insiders. As of now, we have a list of 30 candidates who are suspected to have paid money to the racketeers for manipulating their marks. We will also probe the money trail and how these candidates were approached by the racketeers,” a police official told The Indian Express.

The private company was given the contract to check the OMR answersheets of the written exam for the recruitment process. After the malpractices came to light, the SRPF suspended the process and decided to conduct the written examination again.The police are now on the lookout for three more suspects, identified as Praveen Bhatkar, Bhushan Deulkar and Tejas Nemade, who are employees of the same company.

Nanded District Police had started looking into the results of the recruitment exam after they found that 13 candidates had scored exceptionally high marks — almost 90 out of 100. When the question papers of these students were checked, it was revealed that they had not done any calculations to answer the questions.
The investigation revealed that employees of the Pune-based company, who were given the answersheets of the candidates, used to fill up the blank spaces left by candidates during the exams. They used to mark the correct answers based on the question paper key provided to them by the police.

The policemen who acted as middlemen had tapped candidates who were ready to pay heavy sums to the tune of Rs 5 to 10 lakh. In the OMR system, multiple choice questions (MCQs) answered by the candidates are scanned by a computer-based system to get the results. The system is used in most competitive exams that have MCQs.