OMR sheets of recruitment tests conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission were allegedly tampered with in collusion with Nysa Communications Private Limited, a Noida-based company, the CBI said on Monday.
The agency made the statement after Niladri Das, a former vice-president of the company, was produced in a special CBI court in Alipore.
The commission had hired the Noida company to evaluate OMR sheets of tests for recruitment of teachers and non-teaching employees of government-aided schools.
Officials of the central agency said Das was arrested based “on allegations of manipulation of marks of OMR sheets and illegal manipulation in preparation of the panel” by the company “in conspiracy with other accused and officials” of the West Bengal School Service Commission.
Das, the CBI said, was vice-president of Nysa Communication Private Limited.
His name emerged, the CBI said, during the investigation of manipulation of marks on OMR sheets used for selection tests in 2016.
“We have found certain data from his mobile phone that suggest a former senior functionary of the commission sent him messages with specific instructions about OMR sheets. The phone has been sent for a forensic test,” said a senior CBI official.
The agency has learnt that Das had set up a company called ND Info System Private Limited while working for Nysa, the officer said.
The CBI had in September searched the offices of Nysa as well as ND Info in connection with its probe into alleged tampering of marks.
The offices were searched days after Subires Bhattacharyya, a former chairman of the commission, had been arrested in connection with alleged irregularities in recruitments in schools.
CBI officers said Bhattacharyya would send the names of candidates who failed to clear recruitment tests to the commission’s programme officer with the instruction that their marks be increased.
“Bhattacharyya ensured that the marks of these candidates were tampered with in a manner that the candidates make it to the merit list. A key functionary of the IT company (hired to evaluate the OMR sheets) did the tampering,” the CBI officer said.
“Das was entrusted with handing the tampered OMR sheets to the commission after making the necessary changes.”
The judge after hearing the submissions of the lawyers representing Das and the CBI remanded the accused in judicial custody till March 30.
President Droupadi Murmu visits Netaji Bhavan
President Droupadi Murmu, accompanied by Governor CV Ananda Bose, went to Netaji Bhavan on Monday afternoon. Sumantra Bose, a grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and director of Netaji Research Bureau, received the President and the governor. While showing the guests around, Sumantra Bose took them to the 1937 Wanderer (left), the car that Subhas Chandra Bose rode during The Great Escape in 1941. “I showed her the interiors of the car, in particular the seat Netaji took during The Great Escape,” said Sumantra Bose, a professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics. Thereafter, he took the guests upstairs to Netaji’s bedroom (above), which overlooks Elgin Road. The President offered tributes to the leader in this room. She also went to the room on the same floor that Netaji used as an office after he became president of the Indian National Congress in 1938. Sumantra Bose gifted the President several books, including Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Life, Politics & Struggle, a compilation of essays by Krishna Bose.