26 Assam probationer officers summoned in cash-for-job scam

Guwahati, June 9 (IANS) Assam Police summoned 26 officers of the state civil service and allied service cadre on Friday to collect specimens of their handwritings for forensic verification over suspicion that they may have bribed to clear the exam.

The 26 officers included 13 Assam Civil Service (ACS) cadres, six Assam Police Service (APS) cadres and the rest belonged to allied services. All the 26 officers are working on probation in different parts of the state and are suspected to have been involved in the cash-for-job scam.

Those summoned on Friday included son of a former minister in the erstwhile Congress government in Assam, a relative of a Rajya Sabha MP from Assam and a relative of a current Union Minister of State, besides others.

The officers were summoned to the Special Branch headquarters of the Assam Police at Kahilipara and asked to write some short notes so as to record their handwriting specimens. They were also subjected to oral examinations to test their knowledge on different subjects.

Earlier, the investigating team had collected the answer scripts of 990 candidates of the state civil service examinations and sent them for verification.

Police said so far they have found anomalies in the answer scripts of 26 candidates and hence they were summoned on Friday.

Last month, Assam police had arrested three ACS officers in connection with the scam and sent them to judicial custody.

The three accused, circle officers Bhaskar Jyoti Devasarma, Bhaskar Dutta and Amit Sarma, had cracked the APSC-conducted exam allegedly by bribing its arrested chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul.

The Assam Police have recently taken into custody over 1,200 answer scripts of candidates who have cracked the state civil service examination since 2013. The process to send those for forensic verification is on.