Cash-For-Jobs Scam: BJP lawmaker’s daughter Pallabi Sarma arrested

A BJP lawmaker’s daughter have been arrested in Guwahati along with 19 civil and police service officers in Assam, in connection with the civil service job scam in the state. Pallabi Sarma, daughter of RP Sharma, BJP’s Lok Sabha MP from Tezpur. Also another arrested is the niece of BJP legislator Joyram Engleng.

Today, in Kahilipara area of Guwahati, the Assam Police had summoned three state police officers, 13 civil service officials and three allied service officials to appear for a handwriting test at the Special Branch Headquarters.

Earlier the officers use to being let go after the handwriting test but many of them disappeared later avoiding arrest. So this time, the Assam Police officials decided to arrest the accused immediately after their handwriting was matched with answer sheets and found to be fake in a forensics test.

On Thursday, the arrested officials will be produced in the Special Judge’s Court in Guwahati as per the police source. The arrested officers appeared for the Combined Competitive Examination-14, in 2014 and were given appointments in 2016.

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These officers had reportedly bribed huge amounts of money to the some members of the Commission, which holds examinations for these plum posts of state service cadres. The arrest of an assistant engineer, who was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe of Rs 10 lakh from a woman dentist, opened a can of worms in the APSC.

Earlier the Assam police arrested 44 government officers in connection with the scam. The prime accused and suspended chairman of APSC, Rakesh Paul along with the arrested officials are taken to the Guwahati Central Jail.

There were two sets of answer scripts of three ACS officers were found in a raid at Rakesh Paul’s residence and APSC office in Guwahati. As their selection was found to be based on duplicate assessment, the trio was arrested immediately.

Later, police seised more than 1,000 copies of answer scripts from the APSC office for examination.

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