Cluster education officer arrested for selling textbook as scrap

Three persons, including a cluster education officer (ECO) of Bangalore south zone, were caught and handed over to police, while they were trying to sell school textbooks meant for free distribution, at a scrap shop on Tuesday evening.

Dhananjaya, 38, a resident of Masjid Road, Austin Town and ECO, Krishnamurthy, 50, who runs a book shop on Magadi Road and Manjunath, 28, a goods vehicle driver, are the arrested. The police recovered more than a 1,000 textbooks from them, including that of Kannada language, Science and Social Studies.

Dhananjaya, who was in charge of a few schools to supply free textbooks, connived with Krishnamurthy to make money. He created fake documents establishing that all the books were distributed. Later, they decided to sell them at a scrap shop for Rs 8 per kg.

They loaded the books in a goods vehicle owned by Manjunath and the trio reached Sri Rangarao Road where they wanted to sell them. Naveen, an advocate, noticed that the books were printed in 2013 and 2014. When questioned as to why they were selling them, he failed to get a convincing reply.

Soon, a large number of people gathered and quizzed them and alerted the police, who rushed to the spot and arrested them.