Dummy candidate racket: Chargesheet reveals 46 state govt officials under SIT scanner

In April this year, the state government had formed the SIT after direct intervention from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The SIT was given the mandate to probe about 50 cases registered across Maharashtra, including 10 in Pune. According to the initial estimate of the investigators, dummy candidates were suspected to have appeared in over 400 cases in the last six years, representing actual candidates. As many as 46 candidates were recruited via exams taken by impersonators, revealed the SIT’s primary probe.

Several recruitments across various departments. including police, social welfare, government secretariat, agriculture and women and child development, are now under the SIT’s scanner. For each selected candidate, those running the racket were paid anywhere between Rs 5 to 10 lakh,
Yogesh Jadhav, a 27-year-old political science graduate who is preparing for the civil services examination, had unearthed the impersonation cases by filing several Right to Information (RTI) applications. Jadhav had started digging into the cases after he found out that several youths known to him had sold or mortgaged their ancestral land or house to pay a middleman, in order to get selected for government jobs.

The SIT has submitted a chargesheet against seven arrested accused, including kingpin Prabodh Rathod, a government employee from Nanded who has since been suspended. Other accused include the impersonators, including two then serving police officers of assistant inspector rank, a CID handwriting expert and a policeman who was part of the initial probe.

Superintendent of Police with the CID, Shankar Kengar, who heads the SIT, said,”Our probe shows that of all the cases in which dummy candidates appeared … 46 were selected and they are currently serving in various government departments. We are now going through each and every case…”.
The chargesheet talks about how photos of each dummy candidates, with different hairstyles, were taken, and how image-edited photos of them closely resembling the original candidates were attached on the hall tickets. The dummy candidates appeared for exams in departments such as revenue, agriculture, police and treasury, as well as for administrative posts such as clerks, office executives, sub-inspectors, supervisors, civil engineering assistants and agriculture officers, states the chargesheet.

In his statement, one of the accused, Baliram Bhatlondhe, talks about how he met two officials from ACB in 2015, during a probe by the Bureau against Rathod, in a separate case, and how “they were bribed to avoid an inquiry”. Bhatlondhe has also revealed how invigilators at the exam halls were “compromised, and they didn’t check the dummy candidates properly”. Bhatlondhe said he himself has appeared for over 20 selected candidates. Another dummy candidate, suspended assistant police inspector Sultan Barabba, has explained in his statement how the signatures of the candidates were forged.

A senior CID officer said, “… The probe is not over. More names and information about other racketeers is surfacing and the SIT is working on it. The cases that are coming to the fore now pertain to recruitment exams for important cadres in government service.”

‘System still has serious flaws’

A top CID official, who is privy to the details of the investigation, said, “… The recruitment system continues to function with serious flaws and it is still a cesspool of corruption. Digitisation, use of computer-based biometric systems and linking it to Aadhar can be some of the possible solutions…

The SIT will give its suggestions to the government once the probe is over.”
Yogesh Jadhav, the student who first unearthed the racket through RTI applications, said, “It would be my request to the government to introduce biometric attendance system in recruitment exams. Also… I request that the strength of the SIT be increased.”