The Assam Police probing the multi-crore cash for jobs scam has arrested 19 serving Government officers for their involvement in the scam. With these arrests on Wednesday, the total number of arrests in the cash for jobs scam has gone up to 55.
Police have summoned these 19 officers for collection of their handwriting samples to be matched with the fake answer scripts recovered during the investigation. However, it turned out to be a decoy operation as police have already collected their handwriting samples and forensically verified those.
“We fear that some of these officers would have gone absconding. So we have collected the handwriting samples from their office and carried out forensic tests. We have substantial evidence against them and so we have arrested them today,” said Dibrugarh Superintendent of Police Goutam Borah.
The Dibrugarh police had been probing the case since 2016 and earlier arrested 36 officers for their alleged involvement in the multi-crore scam that saw money changing hands to the tune of several crores to their names enlisted to the merit list of Assam Public Service Commission, which holds examination for state civil service and other allied cadre service posts.
The 19 officials includes 13 from Assam Civil Service (ACS) grade, three officials from Assam police Service (APS) grade and three others belonging to allied service cadre.
“Each of these officials have submitted three to five fake answer scripts for the examinations,” he said adding that more such officers are likely to be arrested in future after forensic examinations of answer scripts.
Police earlier arrested APSC chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul, members Basanta Doley and Samedur Rahman, APSC examination controller Pabitra Koibarta and three other officials of the Commission for accepting bribes to manipulate the results of examinations.