UP Govt prosecutes 12 policemen in recruitment scam

Lucknow, Oct 23 (UNI) In a major decision today, the Uttar Pradesh government accorded prosecution sanctions against 12 senior Indian Police Services(IPS) officials in connection with the alleged corrupt and illegal norms adopted in the appointment of police constables during the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav regime, in 2005-06.

Altogether 23 IPS officials had been suspended earlier who had headed 23 recruitment boards set up in 2004-05, in which over 22,000 police constables were appointed. Later, some of the IPS officials were reinstated by the government.

The state government had already scrapped the appointment of over 18,000 police constables and the matter was pending in the Allahabad High Court.

According to an official release, the government has given the sanction to register cases against these 12 senior IPS officials under Section 197 of the CrPC and other Sections of anti corruption.

The officials, most of them of the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG ) rank, against whom prosecution sanctions have been given are B B Bakshi, Akhilesh Mehlotra, Daljit Singh Choudhury, ramendra Vikram Singh, B S Tripathi, Satish Kumar Mathur, Chavinath Singh, Sunil Kumar Gupta, R N Yadav, Shailendra Pratap Singh, Malkhan Singh yadav and B K Agarwal.

The state government had registered cases on September 12,2007 against 70 police officials, including 12 IPS officials for their alleged involvent in the police recruitment scam.

The inquiry committee probing the scam has recommended registering of corruption cases against these 12 police officials, 18 Additional SPs and 40 DSPs.

Cases has been registered under various provisions of IPC including Section 420, 419, 467, 468 and 471 and has been referred to police stations concerning 14 recruitment boards for enquiry.

These police officials have been charged with waiving of police verification procedure while recruiting several persons with criminal records, forging exam papers and caste certificates, fudging scores and even changing laid-down criteria to favour the selected candidates.

The high-powered probe committee, headed by Additional Director General of police (ADG), STF Shailja Kant Mishra, had conducted the probe, ordered by Ms Mayawati on June 13,2007. The probe was conducted on complaints filed by some legislators and unsuccessful candidates of eastern UP.

The suspended officials were directly involved in the police recruitment at Bareilly, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Etawah, Kanpur rural, Kannauj and Jhansi.

Between May 2005 and November 2006, more than 22,000 police constables, PAC jawans and wireless operators were recruited at 55 centresin the state. According to the report submitted to the government, at the Gorakhpur recruitment centre, proxy candidates took the examination in 23 cases. This fact had already been verified by handwriting experts.

While mandatory police verification was given a go-by in many cases, in other instances a large number of recruits had criminal records, while in Kanpur seven examination notebooks contained the same handwriting as in Gorakhpur centre.

The report said in Etawah, examiners cleared 700 test papers in a day while in Gorakhpur, as many as 7,000 candidates were interviewed in barely three days although individual interviews were mandatory.

During the investigation, it was found that more than 100 candidates were cleared in the physical measurement test despite being below the mandated height of 67.7 cm. Several cases were detected, where High School and caste certificates were forged.

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