CBI to investigate TNPSC exam scam

MADURAI:  The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday, December 14, 2021, transferred the investigation into the TNPSC Group IV-2019 exam scam to the CBI.

A Division Bench of Justices Pushpa Sathyanarayana and P Velmurugan passed the order on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed last year by one I Mohamed Razvi, an advocate from Madurai. Razvi alleged that the scam could not have been orchestrated without the help of higher officials and he was dissatisfied with the CB-CID’s probe as the department has arrested only some of the candidates and the alleged middlemen. Apprehending that a State agency like CB-CID may not expose the involvement of higher officials of the State, he wanted the investigation to be transferred to the CBI.

In the previous hearing last month, the CB-CID had told the court there was indeed negligence on the part of the TNPSC officials in carrying out their duties but except the two staff – a record clerk and a typist – no other official was found to have colluded in the scam.

The judges, however, had orally questioned the TNPSC as to why the examination conducted in the two centres where the malpractice is said to have taken place was not cancelled. They also asked why the tampering of the wax seal of the transit van, in which the answer sheets were transported to Chennai, was not identified at the initial stage; they had then adjourned the case.

On Tuesday, the Bench allowed Razvi’s plea and transferred the investigation from the CB-CID to the CBI and directed it to hold a free and fair investigation. In the TNPSC Group-IV examination held in September 2019, 99 candidates from Rameswaram and Keelakarai exam centres in Ramanathapuram district reportedly used pens having ‘vanishing ink’ to mark their answers in the OMR sheet.

Later, some persons, allegedly with the help of two TNPSC staff, tampered with the answer sheets when they were being transported to Chennai in a van, and filled the correct answers on the sheets. The CB-CID investigated the scam and arrested 118 persons.