New Delhi, March 4
Nine railway officials have been arrested and booked along with unknown candidates by the CBI over a Departmental Examination Paper Leak Scam under the East Central Railway at Mughal Sarai on the eve of the exam scheduled for Tuesday, an official said.
Overall, 26 Railway officials have been arrested in this case so far, he said, adding that investigators also seized Rs 1.17 crore reportedly collected from the candidates for leaking the question papers.
East Central Railway had scheduled a Departmental Examination on Tuesday for the posts of Chief Loco Inspectors.
During checks conducted by the CBI at three spots past midnight on March 3 at Mughal Sarai, a total of 17 candidates were found with photocopies of hand-written question papers, the official said.
Those booked by the federal probe agency include a Senior Divisional Electrical Engineer (Ops) Sushant Prashar and Senior DEE Indu Prakash, said an official.
Investigation revealed that the accused Sr. DEE (Ops) was given the responsibility for setting and preparing the question paper for the said examination. He in his own handwriting had written the questions in English and allegedly gave it to one Loco Pilot who in turn translated it into Hindi and further gave it to an OS (Trg.).
The CBI said the OS (Trg.) allegedly gave it to the candidates through a few other railway employees.
The CBI has arrested the accused Sr. DEE (Ops) and other Railway employees on allegations of indulging in the collection of money and distribution of question papers.
As many as, 17 departmental candidates who were working as Loco Pilots allegedly paid money for the question paper and were caught red-handed with the copies of the question papers, all of them have been arrested.
Overall, 26 Railway officials have been arrested in this case so far. Some of the accused named in the CBI FIR include: N.K. Verma, R.N.S. Yadav, Ajeet Singh, Anish Kumar, Nityanand Yadav, Krishna Yadav and Suryanath.
The FIR said that Krishan Yadav had already accepted bribes from the candidates to ensure their selection in the upcoming examination. On March 1, Krishan Yadav assured a candidate that on March 3 he would be taken to some undisclosed location where the paper would be shared with him and he would be kept there for the whole night.
The hand-written question papers along with their photocopies were seized and these question papers were tallied with the original/actual question paper and were found to have matched.