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Court rejects bail plea of ADGP Paul in PSI recruitment scam
The counsel for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Special Public Prosecutor (SPP), Prasanna Kumar, appealed to the court not to grant bail to the arrested ADGP, as he was the person in charge of conducting the exams for recruitment of PSI posts.
The first additional chief metropolitan magistrate court rejected the bail petition filed by the arrested additional director general of police (ADGP) Amrit Paul in connection with the police sub-inspector (PSI) recruitment scam on Monday.
The counsel for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Special Public Prosecutor (SPP), Prasanna Kumar, appealed to the court not to grant bail to the arrested ADGP, as he was the person in charge of conducting the exams for recruitment of PSI posts.
“The accused had the strong room keys, where the answer scripts were kept. He had given keys to other accused persons who fabricated answer sheets to favour candidates who had bribed them,” SPP Prasanna Kumar told the court.
Paul is the first ADGP — the second-highest rank in the police hierarchy — to be arrested in connection with a corruption case in the state. While contesting Paul’s bail plea, the prosecution, on behalf of the CID, informed the court that former DySP Shanta Kumar, who has also been arrested in the case, had handed over ₹1.3 crore that he had allegedly collected from some PSI aspirants to a few individuals on Paul’s instructions. The prosecution said police needed Paul’s custody to recover that money.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka criminal investigation department (CID) that has filed a petition before a Bengaluru court last week to conduct a narco-analysis test on the suspended additional director general of police (ADGP), Amrit Paul, last Friday reiterating that the test holds key to solve anomalies in the police sub-inspector (PSI) recruitment case.
Paul was arrested on June 4 on charges of allowing malpractice in the recruitment of police sub-inspector (PSI) posts. With the ADGP refusing to undergo the test, the matter is pending before the court.
A day before police filed the petition before the court to subject the officer to the narco-analysis, leaders of Congress had made a similar demand.
A senior Karnataka police officer, on condition of anonymity, said the CID filed the petition on July 14, not due to political demands, but to get information on some aspects of the investigation.
In October, the examinations for the recruitment of police sub-inspectors posts were held. As many as 545 candidates cleared the exam in January from a group of 54,287 candidates who had taken the writing exam. The PSI recruitment scam is a case about alleged irregularities in this recruitment.
The probe into the involvement of the recruitment wing officials revealed that Paul, who was heading the recruitment division when the scam broke out, was part of the malpractice. “First of all, on the day the answer sheets arrived at the recruitment wing office, ADGP Paul had given the keys of the strongroom, where the OMR sheets were kept under tight security, to Deputy Superintendent of Police Shantha Kumar,” said the officer.
Kumar then allegedly roped in first division assistant Harsha and reserve sub-inspectors (RSIs) Sridhar and Srinivas to help him switch off the CCTV and fill up the blank OMR sheets. “The strongroom can be accessed only using a biometric entry. The investigators have found multiple entries to the strongroom that night, in some cases as early as 4 am. The officers who entered the room have been arrested. Considering they entered the room at odd hours and the fact that the ADGP handed over the keys shows these officers were involved in the conspiracy,” said the officer.
