The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission on Tuesday suspended three officers and is preparing to conduct an inquiry against two others for allegedly changing the written copies of 50 aspirants of the mains examination of the state judicial services.

Shravan Pandey, an examinee who had failed to clear the examination of provincial judicial services (public commission services-judicial), moved Allahabad High Court three months ago claiming that the answer sheet he was given to see after his demand for scrutiny was somebody else’s and his handwritten copy was missing.

An inquiry on the court’s direction revealed that two bundles of 25 copies each were changed.

UPPSC chairman Sanjay Srinet told the court that the department has suspended section officer Shiv Shankar, review officer Nilam Shukla and assistant review officer Bhagwati Devi “for their lackadaisical approach”.

A departmental inquiry has been ordered against Satish Chandra Mishra, the observer officer, and the commission has sought permission from the government to take action against Chandra Kala, who recently retired from the post of assistant review officer.

Commission secretary Ashok Kumar said: “Shravan Pandey had filed an RTI plea and on receiving a written copy claimed it was not his handwriting. We are scrutinising 3,019 answer sheets of about 18,000 candidates now.”

The copies don’t bear the name or any other identity of the candidates. Each candidate is allotted a code number and it is mentioned on the top of the answer sheet.

A source in the commission said the names of some of the candidates against their codes in the answers sheets and the files of the commission were changed to “pass some failed candidates in place of some of those who had indeed cleared the examination”.

“Pages of the successful candidates were removed from their copies and attached to the copies of those whom the corrupt officers wanted to help,” the source said.