Representational Pic
Nagpur/Thane.
The sensational paper leak of Army Recruitment exam has not only unsettled the common man’s faith in army but also sent senior officers in jitters. The latest update on the crime is that three clerks working in the Army Recruitment Office in Nagpur and the proprietor of the Raje Chatrapati coaching academy in Phaltan, Satara district, have been identified the masterminds of the exam paper leak during the recruitment of Class III personnel in the army.
The was informed by Thane police on Wednesday.
The recruitment racket was a money-spinner for the cartel and their agents, 21 of whom were arrested last week by the Thane police.
The three Nagpur clerks, Ravi Kumar, Dharamvir Singh and Nigam Kumar Pandey, all at the rank of havaldar, would soon be arrested, said police commissioner Param Bir Singh.
The scam was unearthed by the crime branch, which pursued a tip-off from a Kalwa coaching class.
“The papers for the exams conducted in the March 2016 exams were also leaked and Ravi Kumar sold the papers to Santosh Shinde of the Phaltan academy for Rs 50 lakh. Of the 50 who had appeared in the exams from his (Shinde’s) coaching class, 48 cleared the exams and we are probing if they had paid for the papers,” Singh said.
The officer said this year the gang had spread its operations far and wide and expected to make Rs 1.35 crore byselling the leaked papers to more than 350 candidates.
Singh said Shinde was in touch with Dhaklu Patil, a jawan attached to Assam Rifles in Nagaland who may have been involved in other exam scams as well.
As the main centre of the entire racket was Phaltan, a team of officials was conducting searches there. Singh said the police were also on the lookout for others who were deeply involved in the racket.
Singh said the question papers were usually dispatched in CD format to Army Recruitment Offices to be printed. “The papers might have been leaked at the transit stage while being handled by the lower-level staff,” he said.
Singh said coaching institutes from the state had sought to know about students from other coaching institutes and offered them the leaked papers for a price.
The papers for the exams conducted in the March 2016 exams were also leaked and (army clerk) Ravi Kumar sold the papers to Santosh Shinde of the Phaltan academy for Rs 50 lakh. Of the 50 who had appeared in the exams from his (Shinde’s) coaching class, 48 cleared the exams and we are probing if they had paid for the papers.
