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Nine held in T’gana public service exam paper leak case
After the paper leak came to the fore, the TSPSC cancelled the examination and postponed other exams for the posts of veterinary assistant surgeon, scheduled to be held on March 15 and 16.
The Hyderabad police on Monday arrested nine people, including an employee of the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC), in connection with the paper leak of the written examination for recruitment of assistant engineers (civil), held on March 5.
After the paper leak came to the fore, the TSPSC cancelled the examination and postponed other exams for the posts of veterinary assistant surgeon, scheduled to be held on March 15 and 16.
Sharing details, deputy commissioner of police (South-West Zone) Kiran Khare said the arrested included: Pulidindin Praveen Kumar, working as assistant section officer in TSPSC and Atla Raja Shekhar Reddy alias Raju, an outsourcing employee of TSPSC.
The other accused are: L Renuka, L Dhakya, K Rajeshwar, K Neelesh Nayak, P Gopal Nayak, K Srinivas and K Rajender Nayak. The police seized from them four pen drives, three laptops, a desktop, an iPad and seven mobile phones.
“Based on the complaint by assistant secretary (administration), TSPSC, on Saturday, a case was booked against the accused in Begum Bazar police station under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, besides Section 66 (b) (c) and 70 of the Information Technology Act and Section 8 of the Prevention of Examinations Malpractices Act,” the DCP said.
The DCP said Praveen Kumar has been working in TSPSC since 2017, while Rajasekhar Reddy alias Raju has been working as network expert since November, 2017 on outsourcing basis as a part of the team provided by Telangana State Technology Services (TSTS).
Raju, being a network expert has full information about all the computer systems in the TSPSC office, said police. Both Kumar and Raju got in touch with Renuka, who sought their help in the leakage of question papers for the recruitment tests by offering them money.
“Both of them managed to steal the data from the computer of the confidential section. They transferred the data to Kumar’s pen drive and took a print out of the (civil) exam paper and general studies paper and handed them to Renuka and Dhakya Nayak by accepting ₹5 lakh on March 2,” the DCP said.
Subsequently, another ₹5 lakh was handed over to Kumar on March 6, a day after the completion of the exam, he said.
Prior to this, Rajeshwar Nayak, who happens to be brother-in-law of Dhakya Nayak, contacted his cousin K Srinivas, who was working as a police constable in Medchal police station and asked him to purchase the question paper since he was also writing various competitive exams.
However, Srinivas refused to purchase the question paper since he was focusing on the sub-inspector recruitment exam. However, he directed them to contact Nilesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak who were appearing for the AE (Civil) exam.
Accordingly, Rajeswhar Nayak contacted Neelesh and Gopal and took ₹13.50 lakh from them and arranged the question paper. They even escorted the two to the examination centre on March 5, the DCP said.
“All the accused persons were taken into custody by the Begum Bazar Police, they are being produced before the local court for judicial remand,” Khare added.
