BHUBANESWAR: The alleged mastermind of the police sub-inspector (SI) recruitment scam Sankar Prusty claimed on Sunday that job racket to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore operated during the previous (BJD) government.
While being escorted out of the Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) here by the Crime Branch (CB) officers after his arrest from Uttarakhand on Saturday, Prusty said, “I have all the evidence against the persons who conspired together to cancel the SI recruitment examination. I will submit the evidence to the state government.”
Prusty claimed he was not hiding and fighting the case legally by filing pre-arrest bail applications in the Orissa High Court and the Supreme Court.
Earlier in the day, the CB questioned a few suspects and Prusty together to elicit more information about the ‘syndicate’ which is believed to be behind the scam. Sources said, Prusty, who went off police radar after the fraud came to the fore, had reportedly taken the help of a monk to escape to Nepal.
After the scam was busted, he went into hiding in New Delhi, but later went to Uttarakhand and from there, he escaped to Nepal to evade arrest. He reportedly told the monk, who was heading towards Nepal, that he was in some trouble and hitchhiked in the latter’s car.
“We were aware that he was staying in a homestay in Nepal since the last few days and maintaining a very low profile. In fact, he was very hardly coming out of the homestay,” said the CB sources.
A team of CB officers, closely monitoring his activities, was aware that he would arrive at the border to sign his pre-arrest bail application, which he had filed in the Supreme Court through his advocate. He had planned to send the application to his advocate in a bus.
“Prusty would have fled again if the officers had not nabbed him on time,” said CB sources. Meanwhile, the CB has seized his SUV, two iPhones, another mobile phone and several documents from his possession.
Prusty headed Panchsoft Technologies, a firm which was contracted certain works of the SI recruitment examination. The tender of the examination, conducted by the Odisha Police Recruitment Board (OPRB), was awarded to ITI Limited, a central PSU based out of Kolkata.
The ITI Ltd, however, sub-contracted the work to Bhubaneswar-based Silicon Techlab and key tasks were handed over to Panchsoft Technologies.