LB Nagar hotel scam hub: Staff among 19 witnesses

HYDERABAD: Pulling up police for refusing to allow protests even at a specially designated spot such as 'Dharna Chowk' near Indira Park, the Telangana HC on Friday directed city cops to permit BJP to hold its demonstration there over TSPSC paper leak on Saturday. Justice B Vijaysen Reddy, said number of people should not exceed 500.
The confidential section officer, Shankar Laxmi, and two other staff of Telangana State Public Service Commission are among 19 witnesses named in the police remand report in the question paper leak case. Names of a few employees of a hotel in LB Nagar have also been added to the list. The hotel in question was the meeting ground of those accused of leaking the assistant engineer (civil) exam paper, before appearing for the exam on March 5, said sources.

SIT moved a petition before a local court on Friday, seeking custody of seven of 12 accused nabbed in the question paper leak case so far. They sought the custody of Praveen Kumar, Rajasekhar Reddy, Dakya Naik, Rajeshwar, Shameem, Suresh and Ramesh Kumar. The petition is yet to be heard.
Apart from the nine earlier arrested, SIT added names of three new offenders - Shameem, 43, who worked as assistant section officer; N Suresh, 30, an ex-outsourcing worker of TSPSC and D Ramesh Kumar, 34, data entry operator-cum-PA to a TSPSC member from Uppal - in the remand report. SIT sleuths stated the latest arrests were based on the confession of the main accused, P Praveen Kumar and A Rajasekhar Reddy, who confirmed that they leaked the group 1 prelims question papers to the trio. All the three had qualified the exam with a score of over 100.