An army officer of the rank of Colonel along with five civilians was arrested by anti-corruption bureau of the CBI on Saturday for allegedly receiving bribe from candidates during recruitment drive at National Defence Academy. The Colonel is deployed as staff officer to commandant of NDA, Lt Gen Jatinder Singh.
Besides Col Kulbir Singh (45), others arrested are Balkishan Charan Lal Kanojia (35), Vishnu Prasad Sharma (42), Ramesh Dilip Gaikwad (32), Dattaraya Eknath Shitkal (52) and his cousin Manoj Maruti Shitkal (32). The civilians are local residents.
The CBI has registered a case under the relevant sections of the IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act.
Acting on a tip off, CBI officials raided 14 places in Pune, Mumbai, Gurgaon and Sonepat, and recovered huge cash, which was allegedly taken by officials and their touts for recruiting subordinate staff like cook, gardener, library and laboratory attendants, cadet orderly and lower division clerks.
During the CBI raids, huge cash and documents like leaked question papers and list of candidates were seized.
As per the complainant, examination for recruiting lower division clerk, others was held on June 15. During investigation it was revealed that suspects entered into a criminal conspiracy to cheat the government and obtain illegal gratification from job aspirants for which the Colonel misused his position.
“Singh and Kanojia asked the candidates to only sign the answer sheets and leave them blank which could be filled in with correct answers by suspects so that the candidates could be recuited by the NDA.”
The team by Rajpal Singh, deputy superintendent of police (CBI-ACB), informed the court that, “the arrested persons are in possession of lists of persons who were to be appointed on account of gratification obtained from them. They also have fake answer sheets of such candidates.”
On Sunday, the six accused were produced before the court of special judge DR Mahajan who remanded them to police custody till July 2. Special public prosecutors of CBI Vivek Saxena and Ayub Pathan said the CBI has recovered cash to the tune to Rs83 lakh from Singh’s house and Rs92 lakh from other suspects.
Meanwhile, NDA has said that it has not received any official communication from the CBI on this issue. NDA maintained that Col Singh was detained by CBI when he was in Mumbai and was being questioned for certain irregularities during the recruitment of lower division clerks and Group C employees.
NDA has made it clear that it has not received any complaint about the recruitment process but was investigating the chain of events that led to detainment of Col Singh.
