BENGALURU: The 10-day police custody of former IPS officer and Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Amrit Paul’s, who was arrested in the police sub inspector (PSI) recruitment scam on July 4, will end on Thursday. A lot will depend on whether the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) will seek extension of his police custody. Police can seek maximum 14 days custody in a case.
Paul will move for bail application if the court remands him to judicial custody (JC). Sources said Paul has allegedly denied his involvement in the scam and is reported to have said that his subordinates and the staff at the educational institutions where examinations were held, let him down.
To that extent he has allegedly admitted to his “oversight”, according to informed sources. Paul has however, reportedly denied receiving money in the scam. Sources said that candidates, who had fraudulently cleared the examination, had allegedly paid between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 80 lakh in cash through middlemen.
PSI recruitment scam: 80 arrests made by CID
The CID is yet to get the trail of money. The agency had earlier searched Paul’s house in Sahakaranagara and raided a farmhouse in Chikkaballapur taluk, which is reportedly linked to him. The 1,900-page charge-sheet filed by the CID on July 5 talks about the sordid saga of the fence eating the crop, with the complicity of police officials, heads of the educational institutions, which were the exam centres of the PSI recruitment in October last year, invigilators and the middlemen.
The CID has registered eight FIRs and arrested 80 people. The probe so far has shown how former deputy superintendent of police at Lingasur, Mallikarjun Sali had reportedly introduced police inspector (finger print) Anand Mestri to Rudragowda Patil, brother of Afzalpur block Congress president Mahanthesh D Patil, and how Mestri, who was on duty outside the Jnana Jyothi English Medium School, Kalaburagi had reportedly helped some candidates get their question papers manipulated by Kashinath, principal of the institution.
The CID chargesheet mentions that former BJP leader Divya Hagaragi, who ran the Jnana Jyothi English Medium School, at the alleged offer of Assistant Engineer, Irrigation Depar tment , Manjunat h Melkundu, reportedly accepted Rs 25 lakh from candidates and paid around Rs 4,000 to invigilators to rig the papers. Melkundu and Kashinath had surrendered before the CID in May. Around 54,041 students had appeared for the examination for 545 posts of police sub-inspectors on October 3, 2021. The government had annulled the examination after the scam broke out.