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Army officer arrested for recruitment paper leak in Feb sent to police custody
The Lt Col-rank army officer has been arrested for leak of the question paper for the army recruitment examination that was slated to be held on February 28. The examination was cancelled at the last minute following a probe by the Pune police and military intelligence.
PUNE: A Lieutenant Colonel-rank army officer arrested for his alleged involvement in the army recruitment question paper leak case has been remanded in police custody till May 25. The officer, identified in court documents as Lt Col Bhagat Preetsingh Sartajsingh Bedi, was remanded in police custody by Pune’s additional sessions judge SR Navander on Tuesday.
Lt Col Bedi is the third serving army officer - the other two hold the rank of Major - to be arrested in two cases related to the question paper leak. In all, 12 people have been arrested.
A senior Pune police officer said the army had handed over Lt Col Bedi, 44, to the police after its internal inquiry established his alleged role. “An internal inquiry was conducted by the Indian Army and then he was handed over to us,” said Pune’s assistant commissioner of police, crime, Laxman Borate.
Borate said the police needed his custody to recover the mobile phone that the officer had used to allegedly leak the question paper. He said the army did hand over the mobile phone that the officer was currently using but this wasn’t the one that he used to leak the question paper. “We have to recover that phone”.
The army’s recruitment exam, scheduled to be held on February 28, was cancelled at the last minute after the army’s military intelligence team and the crime branch of Pune police carried out a joint operation that revealed question papers of the common entrance exam for recruitment of general duty soldiers were being sold for ₹4-5 lakh.
Borate said Lt Col Bedi was arrested after he was named as the source of the question paper by Vira Prasad Kotiswamy, 41, a storekeeper posted in Delhi. Kotiswamy was arrested on May 15 and is also in police custody.
Public prosecutor Premkumar Agarwal said Lt Col Bedi had breached protocol that required him to not use his phone.
“He was the presiding officer on the committee that decides on the matters related to the question paper. A CD is provided to the presiding officer and the password is also provided to open the CD. The use of phones is not expected in this process. He used his phone and sent the question paper,” said PP Agarwal.
Lt Col Bedi’s lawyer Sudhir Shah, however, insisted that Lt Col Bedi is innocent and his name hadn’t even appeared in the charge sheet filed by the police. “The case was registered on March 1. The charge sheet has been filed. But his name does not figure in the charge sheet,” said Sudhir Shah.
The Pune police had filed two FIRs, one at Vishrantwadi police station and the second at Wanowrie police station, on March 1 for the leak that led to the cancellation of the recruitment exam. Nearly 30,000 aspirants were scheduled to appear for the exam across 40 centres.
Two Major-rank officers, Major Murugan Thangavelu,47, and Major Vasant Vijay Kilari, 45, were arrested earlier in the Wanowrie case apart from Kishore Mahadev Giri , 40, of Baramati; Madhav Sheshrao Gitte, 38, of Sappers Vihar colony in Pune; Bharat Lakshman Adakmol, 37, from Pune’s Pachora; Gopal Yuvraj Koli, 31, of BEG Centre in Dighi; and Uday Dattu Auti, 23, a resident of BEG Khadki. The suspects arrested in Vishrantwadi were identified by the police as Ali Akhtar Khan, 47, Azad Lal Mohammed Khan, 37, and Mahendra Chandrabhan, 37.
