Patna: A senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and chairman of the Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC), Sudhir Kumar, was arrested on Friday by the police in connection with the test paper leak scandal which surfaced earlier this month. The BSSC is entrusted with the responsibility to conduct tests to make recruitment of lower rank staff in the state government secretariat.
Police said Kumar was arrested from Hazaribag town in Jharkhand with four other relatives who included his brother, sister-in-law and his nephew. Police said all of them were involved in the test paper leak scandal and that they had very strong evidence of their alleged involvement in the scandal.
“We have strong evidence against all of them. They have close links with the accused in the paper leak racket,” Patna’s zonal inspector general of police Nair Hasnain Khan told mediapersons on Friday. According to the police, the BSSC chairman had been missing since the scam surfaced earlier this month.
Soon after their arrest, all the accused were brought to Patna where they are being interrogated by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed on the directive of the state government to investigate the case. The SIT has, so far, arrested around 30 persons in connection with the scam which has earned a very bad name for the state government.
The IAS lobby, meanwhile, was angry over the arrest of the officer and planned to meet the chief minister over the issue soon. “We all know him as a very strict and honest IAS officer, but we are simply clueless under what circumstances he has been arrested,” senior an official of the IAS Association.
This is the second big arrest in the case. Earlier, the SIT had arrested BSSC secretary Parmeshwar Ram in connection with the scam. The state government had cancelled the clerical examination conducted by the Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC) after reports about the question paper leak surfaced.
The issue hit the headlines when angry students appearing for clerical tests being conducted by the BSSC protested on the streets shortly after the question papers of the examination were leaked on WhatsApp online chatting platform. This prompted the state government to cancel examination and order a thorough investigation into the case.
The SIT in the course of investigation has arrested many government officials, heads of coaching centres, teachers and brokers involved in the scandal. The police got hint of a major scam when they raided the house of the BSSC secretary and seized many incriminating documents such as BSSC exams candidates’ admit cards, attendance registers at the exam centres and some land papers, according to sources.
During the investigation, the police also came to know about money transactions in the bank accounts of the BSSC secretary allegedly for helping the candidates. The police said many candidates had sent their names with full exam details to the mobile number of the secretary, who strangely didn’t delete their names.
