‘Judge’s daughter, fudged test’

Government counsel G S Sandhu today showed answer-books of four candidates, including Amol’s. The counsel said that she got 75 in the English paper which was increased to 127—by ‘‘tampering’’ with marks for virtually all her answers—and the 30 in one of her Criminal Law answers was changed to 36. In two cases, the ‘0’ was altered to ‘6’.

There was a stir in the packed Sessions Court room when the state counsel produced the copies showing overwriting in several places. Two PPSC examiners, Jagdish Kalra of the Panjab University’s Department of Correspondence Studies, and Gurpal Singh of Punjabi University’s Dept of Law, who were arrested yesterday by the Vigilance Bureau were also produced.

The other photocopies shown included those of Anil Kumar where his score had been changed from 81 to 164. Similarly, the answer-book of Monica Sethi, relative of an employee in Ludhiana Sessions court, had been allegedly tampered with and her tally changed from 102 to 162.

The answer book of Rajinder Bansal showed that his score had been changed from 73 to 78.

Govt counsel said that the two examiners had to be interrogated in the presence of Sidhu to find out why they had ‘‘tampered’’ with the answer-books, how much had they been paid and where had they put this money.

He said that the tampering had been revealed during the interrogation of former PPSC secretary Pritpal Singh who had claimed that he delivered the answer books to Sidhu’s Chandigarh residence.

Counsel for examiner Gurpal Singh argued that over-writing in the answerbooks could be done at any stage. The probe so far had shown that it was Pritpal Singh who carried answer-books from Patiala to Chandigarh.