Seven persons have so far been arrested in connection with the paper leak during the Haryana Police constable recruitment written test, Kaithal Superintendent of Police, Lokendra Singh said on Monday.
Apart from them, four candidates, who appeared in the recruitment examination and were found red-handed with the answer key of the question paper were also arrested.
Giving details, Singh said that a police team of CIA-1 during examination duty was present near Pehowa Chowk Kaithal on August 7, where it got a secret information that three youths present in a swift car near Mata Gate Kaithal, have the answer key of examination. Police immediately swung into action and arrested Sandeep (23), Gautam (25), both residents of Khapar, Jind and Naveen (27) of Pyoda, who were sitting in Swift car from near Mata Gate Kaithal.
During the course of investigation, police arrested Ramesh (42) a resident of village Thua from Kaithal and Rajesh (26) from Ambala who were associated with the gang. It was also revealed that accused Ramesh runs a coaching center in Kaithal. After interrogation, the sixth member of their gang, Narendra (31) resident of Hisar, was also arrested from Sirsa on August 7. The investigation revealed that the answer key was provided to Ramesh by accused Narendra on the night of August 6.
It also came to light that the answer key was obtained by the accused Narendra by making a deal of Rs one crore. Ramesh and his other associates had decided to give it to others in Rs 12-18 lakh.
All the six accused were presented in the court, from where three accused were sent to judicial custody, while the accused Ramesh, Sandeep and Narendra were taken in 9-days remand for extensive interrogation, he said.
The SP said that during the investigation, it has come to the fore that the gang members had provided answer keys to some youths through WhatsApp while the same was given to some others by-hand. It was decided by the gang members to get money later from candidates after the answer is correct, while advance cheques were also taken from some youths. Police are investigating from where the answer key was leaked, and from where it reached the accused, he added.
Meanwhile, Congress on Monday slammed the government for the Haryana Police constable recruitment paper leak and demanded an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation under the supervision of Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Haryana Congress chief Kumari Selja and senior leader Randeep Surjewala said the youth of the state have been adversely affected. Randeep Surjewala told mediapersons that as many as 8,39,000 youth had applied for the job of Police Constable i.e. every fifth Haryanvi family has been affected by this recruitment. On the very first day itself, i.e. on August 7, 3.5 lakh youth took the constable recruitment exam.