Rudragowda Patil, prime accused in the police sub inspectors’ recruitment exam scam, was arrested on Saturday and remanded in police custody for 13 days.
He was arrested near Pune in Maharashtra and was brought to Kalaburagi in the wee hours of Sunday. The accused was produced at the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, where the court granted 13 days of police custody and he was then handed over to the CID.
The CID officials traced the location of the mobile phone and arrested Patil and his associate involved in the scam, Mallikarjun S. Bidnur.
The officials conducted raids on the residences of Patil and his younger brother, Mahantesh Patil, at Akkamahadevi Colony in Kalaburagi and recovered around 15 OMR sheets and hall tickets belonging to candidates.
Patil is a native of Gour village and a former president of the Gour Gram Panchayat in Afzalpur taluk. His close aide Bidnur is a former member of the Bidnur Taluk Panchayat. <SU>During his tenure as gram panchayat president, Patil was allegedly involved in irregularities in implementation of works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
On Sunday, a video clip went viral on social media in which a person is found passing answer keys to students using vests with SIM card units and Bluetooth-enabled earpieces.
As per the conversation, the answer keys were related to the question paper of the Public Works Department (PWD) junior engineer recruitment examination held in December 2021. The CID officials have widened the ambit of their investigation. Sources said that the probe is not only aimed at probing a possible link of the accused with the PSI recruitment exam case, but also recruitment examinations of other departments.
