11th arrest in MHADA job exam paper leak case; 80 held in 5 recruitment cases so far

Since October last year, the Pune City Police’s Cyber Crime Cell is probing five interconnected cases in which five Maharashtra government recruitment processes were compromised by a deep rooted nexus involving insiders. The cases include those of paper leaks in two state Health Department exams of Group C and D, tampering of assessment of papers in TET of two years (2018 and 2019-20) and a leak of the paper for recruitment in MHADA.

Till now, a total of 79 people, including senior government officials, an IAS officer, several middlemen, people from private entities contracted for recruitment processes, coaching class owners and candidates, have been arrested in these interconnected five probes. Investigators have also seized assets worth multiple crores illegally amassed by these people.

The coordinated probe by five teams from the Cyber Crime Cell has brought to light a widespread nexus through which government recruitment processes were compromised, using the lacunae in the system. Of the 79 arrested till now, 26 are government officials. Officials clarified that the arrested include some persons who were counted more than once on account of being arrested in multiple cases.

Taking further the probe in the MHADA paper leak case, the police on Monday arrested Kanchan Shrimant Salve (31), a driver from Beed district. Salve was produced before a court on Monday and has been remanded to police custody for three days.

In March, the Pune Police chargesheeted 15 accused persons, including IAS officer Sushil Khodwekar, in the case in which results of more than 7,800 candidates appearing for statewide Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) of 2019-20 were tampered with. The probe had revealed that results of these candidates were compromised by the suspects either by altering the answer sheets or by giving fake passing certificates to those who had been disqualified.

Officials said that multiple communications have been sent from Pune City Police to the state government to find out how exactly the papers were leaked and exam processes rigged. Some of these communications include detailed confidential reports. Multiple senior officers overseeing probes of the recruitment scams have said that serious lacunae in the recruitment processes were successfully exploited by the racketeers with the help of insiders. Officials have said there is an urgent need to make these processes technologically robust. While the investigating agencies will probe the culpability of the persons involved in the case, there is still a bigger question of accountability that remains unanswered.