HYDERABAD: As many as 46 people were involved in the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) question paper leak and Rs 1.63 crore changed hands, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case said in the chargesheet it filed in the Nampally criminal court on Friday.
The charge sheet said that the illegal financial transactions were facilitated by the two main accused, who were also TSPSC outsourcing employees, along with mediators who acted as conduits between them and the aspirants.
The SIT, headed by ACP P Venkateshwarlu from the Cyber Crime Station (CCS), Hyderabad, under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police AR Srinivas, Crimes and SIT, gathered crucial evidence to build a strong case. The chargesheet said that there are still some unidentified aspirants who procured question papers from P Ramesh from Warangal who was arrested recently.
The chargesheet lists as accused Pulidindi Praveen Kumar, an Assistant Section Officer (ASO) and Personal Assistant (PA) to the TSPSC secretary, and Atla Rajashekar, an outsourcing employee working as a Systems Network Administrator in the TSPSC.It outlines their conspiracy to gain unauthorised access to the computer systems in the confidential section, where question papers for various exams are stored.
They illicitly downloaded and copied question papers for Group I, DAO, AEE, and AE exams onto their pen drives. Subsequently, they sold these question papers to aspirants through intermediaries.The chargesheet names 16 mediators including Poola Ramesh. Of the 46 accused, the mediators provided the AEE question paper to seven candidates while the AE question paper was provided to 13 candidates. The duo sold the DAO question paper to eight aspirants.
Of the 46 accused, four -- Praveen Kumar, Rajashekar, Shameem and Damera Ramesh Kumar -- were TSPSC employees. Praveen Kumar, Shameem, and Ramesh Kumar even wrote the Group-I exam, while Rajashekar acted as a mediator. Another accused named in the case was Nalagoppula Suresh, a former TSPSC outsourcing employee who was given the Group-I question paper.