The CBI claimed on Friday to have unearthed a multi-crore-rupee railway recruitment scam with the arrest of eight people, including the son of SM Sharma, chairman of the railway recruitment board (RRB) in Mumbai, AK Jagannatham, former additional divisional railway manager, Raipur, and his son Srujan.
An officer said CBI had seized Rs60 lakh from the bank accounts of family members of Sharma and Rs12 lakh from Jagannatham.
Simultaneous raids were conducted in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Raipur to unearth the scam.
Sharma’s son Vivek, Jagannatham and Srujan were presented before a Hyderabad court and remanded in judicial custody for 14 days.
One Raipur-based and two Hyderabad-based agents and an Andhra health department employee were also arrested.
The railways suspended Sharma following the arrest of Vivek.
Jagannatham was nabbed from a hotel in Bangalore. Rs12 lakh, question papers and original certificates of job aspirants were recovered from his room.
During raids in Hyderabad, CBI unearthed Rs21.50 lakh and original certificates of 444 job aspirants from Jagannatham’s house.
RRBs conduct exams for induction of staff in group C. Exams were held across the country on June 6 for recruitment of assistant locopilots and on June 13 for assistant station masters.
Jagannatham, in connivance with the RRB officials in Mumbai, secured a copy of the question paper before the exam for Rs1 crore and distributed its copies to applicants, a CBI officer said.
A railway official said the candidates were made to shell out Rs3.5 lakh per copy and deposit their original certificates with touts. The touts, in turn, deposited the certificates and the amount with Jagannatham. The question papers were leaked a day before the exam.
A CBI officer part of the probe told, “Agreement was to pay part of the money before the exam and the remaining after the results. The certificates were surety.”
The job racket unearthed by CBI could cause major embarrassment to railway minister Mamata Banerjee. SM Sharma, chairman of the railway recruitment board (RRB) in Mumbai, whose son has been arrested in connection with the scam, is a Mamata appointee.
CBI sources said the scam could not have taken place without the knowledge of Sharma. They said CBI planned to question him.
As part of a clean-up drive, the railway minister had removed chairmen of all 20 RRBs appointed by her “corrupt” predecessor and replaced them with her chosen ones in November last year. Sharma was one of them. He was given the prestigious Mumbai RRB to curtail corruption and leaks of railway board examination question papers rampant in the previous regime.
The clean-up drive was initiated after reports of paper leaks in Allahabad and Ajmer. It was also meant to belittle Mamata’s bete noire and former railway minister Lalu Prasad, in whose tenure the 20 RRB chiefs were recruited. However, it seems nothing has changed in RRBs.
Railway ministry sources said Sharma had been placed under suspension till further orders.
Interestingly, the June 6 and June 13 exams for assistant locomotive pilots and assistant station masters, for which the arrests have been made, were the first conducted under the guidance of the new RRB chairmen.
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