KASARGOD: An invigilator in Kasargod blew the lid off a major scam in the direct recruitment of postmen and mail guards in the Department of Post when she reported a candidate from Haryana answering all the questions in Malayalam.
When the police arrived at the examination centre, they allegedly found a mobile phone with Gulbant, 22, with answer codes to all the 100 multiple choice questions in his inbox. Vidyanagar inspector Babu Peringath arrested Gulbant, a resident of Sonipat in Haryana, and impounded the phone. The text message in his mobile read: Code bhejo.
But he was not in a position to reply to it. The invigilator, Shamina Ameer, had him in her crosshairs. There were just three candidates in her examination hall at Chinmaya Vidyalaya in Kasargod.
A while after the first message, Gulbant’s phone started incessantly buzzing, raising the suspicion of the invigilator. She took the phone away. When the phone continued to vibrate on the table, she checked the phone and found it. “The messages were keys to the 100 objective questions,” said a postal official, who was an observer on the campus and was briefed by Ameer.
The messages came in packets of five keys each and were separated by the at the rate sign (@), he said. The police were called in and Gulbant was taken into custody. Another candidate from Haryana, Harish, was taken into preventive custody at the gate of Government Arts and Science College, Kasargod, for carrying bluetooth headset and phone. The arrest of Gulbant comes against the backdrop of this snail-paced probe. The NFPE and the member of parliament from Kasargod P Karunakaran have called for a CBI probe and annulment of the examination.
However, the director and assistant director (recruitment) of Kerala circle refused to acknowledge the possibility of a scam even in the face of mounting evidence. Unlike what was previously believed, the malpractice did not happen at the valuation level. The question papers are leaked.
Kerala Postal Circle of the Department of Post conducted the aptitude examination to recruit 583 postmen across its 24 divisions and 11 mail guards for the Railway Mail Service on May 7.
Officially, director of Kerala Postal Circle, Thomas Lourdes Raj, maintained that the confidentiality of the examination was not compromised. “How can we suspect that?” he told The Sunday Standard, when asked if the question papers were leaked. He saw it as a case of a failed attempt to cheat in the exam. “Two persons were taken into custody. We have asked for the copies of the FIR,” he said.
