Cover-up in asst engineer exam scam? Top cop orders reprobe

Bengaluru police chief Kamal Pant has expressed unhappiness over the probe into the assistant engineer exam.

The exam was conducted last year by the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) to recruit 660 assistant engineers for the Public Works Department (PWD). Two cases were registered about the scam at the city’s Annapoorneshwari Nagar police station in December 2021. It has now emerged that two people named in the FIR are also said to be involved in the police sub-inspector exam scam, which has turned into a major political controversy.

Veerannagowda Devindra Chikkegowda, a 30-year-old civil engineering graduate from Jewargi, Kalaburagi, was caught cheating in the assistant engineer exam. He allegedly used a Bluetooth-enabled transistor-like device tucked inside his vest while taking the exam at St John’s High School in Papareddypalya, West Bengaluru. He was caught by the room invigilator, Deepa Shetty, after she heard a beep and frisked him.

Chikkegowda and others were subsequently named in the FIR registered at the Annopporneshwari Nagar police station under IPC sections related to cheating and criminal breach of trust and under the Information Technology Act and the Karnataka Education Act.

While police filed a remand application to investigate the case further, the city’s top police officer found that the investigating officer didn’t do a thorough investigation. Shockingly, some of the accused were not arrested even after being named in the charge sheet.

Manjunath Melakundi and Rudra Gowda D Patil, who were listed as accused in the assistant engineer exam scam, have been arrested in the PSI recruitment scam being probed by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

Melakundi was also arrested in the assistant engineer exam case while Patil was absconding.

Taking the assistant engineer exam scam seriously, Pant pulled up the investigation officer in the case and asked him to revisit the case. He also ordered him to conduct a thorough probe into the case and file an additional charge sheet, if necessary. The Investigating Officer (IO) has also been instructed to find out if the accused persons were involved in any other exam scam.