Police suspect postal recruitment racket

With the arrest of a youth from Haryana on the charge of examination malpractice in the recently held recruitment test for the postman-cum-mail guard post, the police here have intensified their investigation to unravel what could be a well-orchestrated racket to secure a job in one of the country’s oldest government institutions.

A team headed by Vidyanagar Circle Inspector Babu Peringeth on Friday took Kulwant, 24, into police custody for nine days. He was arrested for allegedly using a cellphone to receive answer keys of the competitive examination through decoded messages believed to have been sent by the racketeers operating from Haryana.

Kulwant was arrested on Sunday and charged under the IPC provisions 420-B (cheating).

He confessed to the police that he got the phone with the help of an accomplice from outside after entering the examination hall, Mr. Peringeth said.

The police, during preliminary investigation, had traced the locati

on tower and identified the cell phone number used from Haryana as the gadget was found to have disseminated answer keys to several aspirants who took the test on the day at various centres in the country.

Throwing further light into the possible magnitude of the recruitment racket, Kasaragod Postal Superintendent T.V. Keshavan told The Hindu here that as many as 5,895 of the 10,060 applicants had appeared for the test held in 19 centres in the district on May 7.

Interestingly, the majority of the aspirants who took the test at the two venues here — Government College, Kasaragod, and Chinmaya Vidyalaya at nearby Vidyanagar — were from Haryana.

According to Mr. Keshavan, as many as 95 and 91 aspirants from the north Indian State had appeared for the examination at the government college and the Chinmaya Vidyalaya respectively while only a minuscule number from Kerala had been allotted the venues to appear for the test, held by outsourcing the services of the private Manipal Technology Ltd.

Generally, the Staff Selection Commission is entrusted with the task of conducting recruitment examination in other cadres of the Postal Department while private agencies too have been found to be involved in the examination process to select posts in recent years, the official said.