VIJAYAWADA: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), Hyderabad zonal office, conducted searches at seven locations in Hyderabad and Secunderabad in Telangana and Guntur district in alleged irregularities in the manual evaluation of answer scripts of the APPSC Group-I Main Exam.
The searches were carried out under Section 17 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, as part of an investigation into the alleged payment of Rs 1.14 crore to a private agency for evaluation work that was not carried out.
The ED initiated the probe based on an FIR registered by the Suryaraopet police in Vijayawada. According to the investigation, following an Andhra Pradesh High Court order in 2021 setting aside digital evaluation and directing manual evaluation, the APPSC entrusted the work to Camsign Media Pvt. Ltd. between November 27, 2021, and February 19, 2022.
The answer scripts were shifted from official premises to Haailand Resorts at Chinakakani village in Guntur district, where they were kept for 84 days between December 2021 and February 2022.
The ED suspects that genuine manual evaluation was not conducted and that marks from the earlier digital evaluation were merely mapped as manual evaluation marks.
The APPSC released Rs 1.14 crore to the private agency through a cheque dated February 16, 2022, signed by the then APPSC Secretary. However, the entire exercise was discarded, and the answer scripts were retrieved and re-evaluated at official premises under CCTV. The results were declared based on the subsequent evaluation.
The searches covered the premises of the then APPSC Secretary P Seetharamanjaneyulu, Camsign Media and its Managing Director P Madhusudhana Rao, Haailand Resorts, TruGrader Services and its Managing Director Akella Peri Srinivasa Rao, and Mahamkali Raghuram. The ED seized incriminating documents and other records related to the case. Probe is on.
