Relatives coerced Bihar bureaucrat to leak papers

When relatives of 1987 batch senior IAS officer Sudhir Kumar went to meet him in Patna’s Beur Jail, the incarcerated chairman of Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC) refused.

An officer without a blot in his career until his arrest, Kumar has been disgraced due to his relatives who nudged him into leaking the BSSC question papers.

Kumar, perceived to be one of the most honest and upright IAS officers in Bihar, was arrested on Friday from Hazaribagh in neighbouring Jharkhand for his involvement in question paper leak.

Kumar, who belongs to the Mahadalit community, was made state home secretary by the then chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who also hails from the same community. He lasted in the post until Nitish replaced Manjhi and appointed his (NK) protégé Amir Subhani.

So impeccable was his record that no one thought Kumar would be lodged in the high-security jail of Patna where he lorded over as Home Commissioner-cum-Secretary two years ago.

On his first weekend in prison, Kumar preferred to have tea and bread as breakfast and dal-rice with seasonal vegetables as lunch on Sunday. The IAS Officers’ Association in Bihar strongly protested against the arrest of one of their senior-most colleagues and submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, but it failed to cut much ice.

Though it did not seem odd that five relatives of Sudhir Kumar appeared for the exams, SIT sources claimed that he provided the question paper with the answers to his brother Awadhesh Kumar, head of the department of geography at Patna Women’s College. Awadhesh passed it to his wife Manju, who, in turn, handed it to Sudhir’s nephew Ashish.