Massive railway job scam unearthed, 8 nabbed

MUMBAI - The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Friday claimed to have unearthed a multi-crore rupee railway recruitment scam with the arrest of eight people, including the son of the chairman of the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) here.

A CBI official said the investigation agency has seized Rs.60 lakh from bank accounts of family members of RRB Chairman, B. Sharma, and Rs.12 lakh from a former additional divisional railway manager, Raipur, A.K. Jagannathan.

Also, simultaneous raids were conducted in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Raipur to unearth the scam involving recruitments for the posts of assistant station masters and loco-pilots for the Indian Railways.

Among those arrested were Vivek B. Sharma, son of the RRB chairman, and Jagannathan, who along with two others were presented before a Hyderabad court and remanded to judicial custody.

Jagannathan was nabbed from a hotel in Bangalore where he was staying. A total of Rs.12 lakh in cash, question papers and original certificates of job aspirants were recovered from his room.

During raids in Hyderabad, the CBI unearthed cash of Rs.21.50 lakh and original certificates of 444 job aspirants from Jagannathan’s residence.

The RRBs across the country are entrusted with conducting examinations for induction of staff in Group C category of the Indian Railways.

Examinations were held all over India on June 6 this year for the recruitment of assistant loco-pilots and on June 13 for the posts of assistant station masters.

Jagannathan, with the connivance of RRB officials here, managed to secure a copy of the question paper before the examination date and provided them to many applicants in return for huge sums of money, a CBI official said.

According to a railway official, the candidates were forced to shell out as high as Rs.300,000 for the copy of the question paper and deposit their original certificates with the touts.

The touts in turn deposited the original certificates and the amount with Jagannathan. The question papers were then leaked to the aspirants a day before the examination.

The job aspirants were required to collect their original certificates after the declaration of the results.

The CBI contended that the entire modus operandi was the brainchild of Jagannathan. He carried out the scam with the help of the RRB officials and the external touts.

It poses potential threat to the prospects of meritorious and deserving job aspirants, the investigation agency said.

The CBI has also warned that similar scams were are being carried out by several gangs in different parts of the country in connivance with the railway officials.