CBI arrests 9 I-T staffers for fraud in recruitment exam

Nagpur: Nine personnel of the Income tax (I-T) department were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) wing of the Central Investigation Bureau (CBI), Nagpur, for their alleged role behind getting selected by involving dummy candidates in the staff selection commission examination (SSC) in 2012-14.
The nine, including two women, were produced before the special court of CBI on Tuesday. They were remanded till December 16.
According to CBI, an offence against 12 were registered in March 2018 by the ACB, following a complaint lodged by the income tax department after they had received confirmation about the irregularities in the recruitment of these employees from the SSC. Three were found to have genuinely appeared in the examination while rest nine got selected through the dummy candidates.
The accused, identified as Rinki Yadav, Sarita, Anil Kumar, Rahul Kumar, Abhay Kumar, Mukesh Kumar, Chandan Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Manish Kumar and Dharmendra Kumar, were all grade II staffers. Yadav was stenographer while the rest were multi-tasking staff (MTS). All the accused are natives of Bihar who had applied for the examination from their home state.
A scrutiny committee of the SSC had found gross mismatch in the credentials of the candidates, including their signatures, thumb impressions and handwritings, following which the issue was brought to the notice of their vigilance team, it is learnt.
The specimen of their thumb impressions, handwritings and signatures were sent to the regional forensic science laboratory which learnt to have taken four years to assess and scrutinize them. The specimens from the ones who had appeared in the examinations were also compared.
“There was a gross mismatch between the credentials of nine who were selected through SSC and posted in the I-T department in Nagpur and those who had appeared in the selection examination. The report was sent to the CBI by the forensic experts which prompted the arrests,” said an official.
It’s learnt that the residences and the offices of the nine accused were searched in the past. Their arrest was pending due to the delayed report from the forensic experts, said a source.
The CBI team under SP MS Khan would now launch a search for the candidates who had aided the crime by appearing in the exam for the selected candidates.