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T’gana paper leak case: SIT begins probe, Oppn seeks judicial probe
Two days after the Hyderabad police arrested nine people in connection with the paper leak of the written examination for recruitment of assistant engineers (civil), held on March 5, the special investigation team (SIT) constituted by the Telangana government has started a probe into the matter, people privy to the matter said on Wednesday
Two days after the Hyderabad police arrested nine people in connection with the paper leak of the written examination for recruitment of assistant engineers (civil), held on March 5, the special investigation team (SIT) constituted by the Telangana government has started a probe into the matter, people privy to the matter said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the several studen unions and political parties have demanded a judicial inquiry into the matter.
The Hyderabad police on Monday had arrested nine people, including kingpin P Praveen Kumar who was working as an assistant section officer in the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC), in the case and sent them to 14-day judicial remand. On Wednesday, the police filed a petition in the Nampally criminal courts seeking a five-day custody of the arrested. The case was posted for hearing on Thursday.
The SIT headed by senior IPS officer A R Srinivas will probe the recruitment of assistant engineers paper leak case besides the reports of similar incidents pertaining to other examinations conducted by the commission.
A senior police official familiar with the development said that Srinivas, along with his team members, conducted a detailed inquiry in the TSPSC office on Wednesday and collected vital information pertaining to various recruitment tests.
“The team collected some important clues from the office servers, besides the mobile phone data of Praveen Kumar. The SIT is suspecting that some other staff members of the TSPSC also might have colluded with Praveen in stealing the question paper from the computers of the commission,” the official said.
Meanwhile, activists of the Student Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) stormed the TSPSC office and demanded that the government order a judicial inquiry by a sitting high court judge into the question paper leakage.
Hundreds of SFI and DYFI activists laid siege to the TSPSC office and tried to gate crash into the building raising slogans against TSPSC chairman B Janardhan Reddy and secretary Anitha Ramachandran. However, the police resorted to lathi-charge and detained several activists.
Later, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) workers also staged a dharna near the TSPSC office and courted arrest by the police. They, too, raised slogans against the state government’s inefficiency in conducting the examination without scope for leakage.
Reacting to the incident, BJP state president Bandi Sanjay also demanded that the government “sack the TSPSC chairman and the secretary and order a judicial probe into the matter”.
“There is an apprehension that a question paper belonging to even the Group-1 preliminary examination held in October 2022, was leaked. The way prime accused Praveen Kumar secured 103 marks out of 150 indicated that he had access to even Group-1 exams,” Sanjay alleged.
TSPSC chairman B Janardhan Reddy, however, allayed the fears of other question paper pertaining to Group-1 examination being leaked. He said the mains examination would be held as scheduled in June this year.
Reddy said the latest case was the handiwork of two in-house persons Praveen Kumar and Rajashekhar Reddy, a networking expert, who colluded to hack into the computer system and accessed the question paper.
He said in view of the hacking of the system, the Commission enhanced the cyber security of all the computer systems. He appealed to government job aspirants and unemployed youth not to have apprehensions about the conduct of the examinations, as they would be conducted with “utmost transparency and fairness”.
