BENGALURU: The Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is probing the teachers’ recruitment scam, arrested 38 teachers from different parts of the state on Wednesday. Earlier, the CID sleuths had arrested 22 persons, including teachers and staff of the education department, and with Wednesday’s arrests, the total number of arrests in the case has gone up to 60.
CID officials said the arrests were made based on a report submitted by the Department of Public Instruction in the ongoing probe into the case. Among the arrested teachers, 24 worked in Kolar, five in Bengaluru South, three in Chikkaballapura and five in Chitradurga district. “CID teams including 18 DySPs and 14 police inspectors raided 51 places in Kolar, Chikkaballapura, Bengaluru and Chitradurga districts on Wednesday and made the arrests,” a CID official said. The case is related to alleged irregularities in the recruitment of teachers that took place in 2012-13 and 2014-15.
Two cases were registered in this regard — one in Vidhana Soudha police station in August and the other in Halasur Gate police station in September. The state government had transferred the case to the CID for further probe. Teachers were allegedly recruited despite not being eligible and some of the selected teachers had not even appeared for the exams.
A thorough probe was initiated into the scam by the ruling BJP government. As the scam took place during former chief minister Siddaramaiah’s government, the BJP government is likely to attack the Congress party, which is running campaigns such as ‘PayCM’ and ‘40% commission’ against Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and his government.