Let courts monitor probes into scams

A regular CID probe may not bring out the whole truth

After a raft of charges of corruption in government contracts, the Karnataka government is now bogged down by one recruitment scam after another. The biggest of them is in the recruitment of 545 police sub-inspectors (PSI), for which over 54,000 aspirants appeared for examinations held in October last. Though charges of malpractice were initially denied by Home Minister Araga Jnanendra and Director General of Police Praveen Sood, the government was forced to order a CID inquiry after incriminating evidence surfaced against one of the candidates, Veeresh, who was found to have obtained 121 marks though he had answered only 21 out of the 100 questions. While the Congress has alleged that a bribe of Rs 80 lakh was fixed for each post, preliminary investigations by the CID have revealed that candidates had paid Rs 10-15 lakh to touts just to ensure that they were allotted a particular examination centre -- Jnana Jyothi English Medium School in Kalaburgi. Here, CCTV cameras were tampered with, and invigilators helped the candidates with their answers. Divya Hagaragi, the owner of the institution and a former district president of the BJP, is on the run after an arrest warrant was issued against her, while her husband is in police custody. A Congress block president, R D Patil, has been arrested for supplying bluetooth devices to a few candidates. The number of PSIs selected from this particular centre was the highest for any examination centre in the state. Six top rank-holders in the exam had appeared from the same centre.

The investigation into the scam should probe not just the role of ADGP (recruitment cell) Amrit Paul, now transferred, but also why the Home Minister sought to brush the issue under the carpet in the face of mounting evidence. Such a scam could not have taken place without the knowledge, if not connivance, of top politicians and senior police officers. Considering that the CID, like the CBI, is not an independent body but is at the mercy of the ruling dispensation, it is doubtful whether the whole truth will come out from a regular CID probe.

The government has ordered inquiries into two more scams, one pertaining to recruitment at Bangalore Milk Union Limited (Bamul) and another involving a question paper leak in examinations to select assistant professors. During the BJP’s earlier stint in 2008-13, a major fraud was detected in the recruitment of KAS officers, with the CID even confirming large-scale malpractices, but nothing eventually came out of it. The present scams, too, could well meet the same fate if not investigated impartially. Therefore, the government should seek a court-monitored CID investigation into these scams.