HYDERABAD: The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday registered criminal cases against 17 persons including 12 Army personnel in connection with alleged irregularities in recruitment of religious teachers in the Army -- the interviews for which were held at Artillery Centre here in July 2013. The complaint was lodged on April 19 by Major General N Srinivas Rao, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Telangana and Andhra sub-area, after an internal probe found the personnel guilty.
The accused include Army personnel of the ranks Subedars, Sepoys and Naiks.
The religious teachers -- all junior commissioned officers -- were inducted into the Army for spiritual activities in unit/establishment concerned and also to deliver spiritual motivation to the troops.
"Initially, Subedar MN Tripati (presently posted with 32 Field Regiment) was posted with Artillery Centre, Hyderabad as religious teacher and was a member of the interview board for recruitment. His name was removed from the interview board following a call from GOC Madhya Bharat area, because of his alleged involvement in unfair practices. Subedar Satya Prakash replaced Tripati in the interview board for conducting recruitments following directions from the then Integrated Headquarters of Ministry of Defence, ''' the GOC said in his complaint.
At the time of recruitment, a pseudonymous complaint in the name of Sepoy Arvind Sharma of 9 Punjab regiment was received by the Integrated Headquarters of Ministry of Defence
with regard to irregularities in recruitment of religious teachers in the Army held from September 16 to 19, 2013. The complaint alleged that Subedar Satya Prakash accepted bribes and influencing the selection process. According to the complaint, Satya Prakash was given a list of 20 candidates by another Subedar MN Tripati, who is alleged to be the mastermind behind the entire racket of luring candidates. In order to run the racket, he used accounts of various people to carry out transactions, which was collected from the candidates as a gratification to influence their selection in the interview board.
The delay in lodging a complaint with CBI, the GOC said, was due to a delay in conduct of an in-house inquiry which involved summoning civilian witnesses and verifying details of bank accounts of all the accused from across the country.
A case of criminal misconduct by public servants, acts done by several persons in furtherance of criminal conspiracy, cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property was thus registered.
Based on complaint, the CBI registered cases against Subedar MN Tripati, 32 field Regiment, Subedar Satya Prakash, 10 medium Regiment, Subedar M K Panday, 851 Light regiment, Naik Aditya Narayan Tiwari, craftman Praveen Kumar Saraswat, Naib Subedar Shiv Poojan Dwivedi, Lance/Naik Jitendra Kumar Yadav, Naik Jagdish Narayan Pandy, Naib Subedar Bal Krishna Garg, Sepoy Mahadevendra Mishra, Sepoy Rajesh Kumar Goswami, Naib Subedar Shaktidher Tiwari.
Cases have also been registered against five civilians -- Indrajeet Gupta, Mithai Lal Gupta, Amarnath Gupta, Viswajeet Gupta (residents of Gorakhpur in UP) and Pankaj Bilthare of MP.