K’taka PSI recruitment scandal: Court rejects bail plea of arrested ADGP

Bengaluru, July 25 (SocialNews.XYZ) The First Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court on Monday rejected the bail petition filed by arrested additional director general of police (ADGP) Amrit Paul in connection with the police sub-inspector (PSI) scandal.

The counsel for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Prasanna Kumar appealed the court not to grant bail to arrested ADGP, as he was the person in charge of conducting the exams for recruitment of PSI posts.

"The accused had the strong room keys, where the answer scripts were kept. He had given keys to other accused persons who fabricated answer sheets to favour candidates who had bribed them," SPP Prasanna Kumar stated.

The fabrication of OMR sheets has been proved in the investigation of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) and bail plea by arrested ADGP Amrit Paul should not be considered, he argued.

CID sleuths have already submitted 1,975 pages of charge sheet against 34 accused persons to the court in connection with the sensational PSI recruitment scandal. The agency is now preparing to submit an additional charge sheet regarding the scandal.

The exams for the PSI posts were held on October 3, 2021. As many as 54,041 candidates appeared for exams. The results were announced this January. Later, the allegations surfaced that candidates who gave very poor performance in descriptive writing got maximum marks in Paper 2.

High Court Justice H.P. Sandesh had termed the scandal as more heinous than a case of murder, dubbing it as an act of terrorism as it had affected the lives of more than 54,000 candidates. Amrit Paul is the first senior IPS officer of the ADGP rank to be arrested while on duty in Karnataka.

The Karnataka government has announced re-exams for 545 PSI posts after the scandal came to light.

Source: IANS