APSC Scam: Paul grilled in prison

GUWAHATI, May 22, 2018: On Monday, Dibrugarh police questioned suspended Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul in Guwahati Central Jail in connection with the recovery of answer scripts from his rented apartment at Bhangagarh last month.

A source said, a police team, led by the investigating officer and additional superintendent of police (headquarters) Surjeet Singh Panesar, interrogated Paul at the central jail for about four hours.

Nearly 200 answer booklets and 300 loose sheets, having the APSC logo, were seized from flat number 5C of Ambika Shree Hari Apartment at Bhangagarh here on April 25.

The Dibrugarh police on Monday also collected the specimen signatures of 74 invigilators of the combined competitive examination (CCE) conducted by the APSC in 2014.

The specimen signatures of the invigilators will be matched with their purported signatures on the answer scripts seized by the police by forensic experts.

Police suspect that after the examination, some candidates had written the answers on duplicate answer scripts and their original answer scripts were replaced with duplicate ones.

The police suspect that in the duplicate answer scripts, Paul had forged the signatures of the invigilators.

Police had earlier seized more than 1,000 answer scripts of the CCE-2014 from the strong room at the APSC office at Khanapara here.

Last month, police arrested Sonitpur district transport officer Prasenjit Kumar Ghosh, who appeared in CCE-2014 and got appointed in 2016.

The source said, "More candidates who cleared the CCE-2014 are likely to be arrested after police receive the report of the forensic examination of the seized answer scripts" .

Source: The Telegraph

Featured image: The Telegraph