Hyderabad: The Commissioner’s Taskforce of the city police here arrested nine persons for their alleged involvement in the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) paper leak case, which led to the cancellation of an exam.
Alleging stealing and leaking of TSPSC (Data Breach) question papers of Assistant Engineers in Town Planning, the Assistant Secretary (Administration) filed a complaint with the Begum Bazaar police. A case of cheating, criminal breach of trust, and conspiracy was registered by Hyderabad. Meanwhile, Task Force officials successfully arrested nine persons for allegedly leaking the question papers.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Task Force P Radha Kishen Rao said that Pulindindi Praveen Kumar, a section officer of TSPSC, is the kingpin of the racket. “He has been working at the TSPSC since 2017 along with A Rajsekhar Reddy, who works as a network expert on an outsourcing basis, to help Telangana State Technology Services. Being an expert at networking, Rajsekhar Reddy has full knowledge of computer systems and IP addresses at the TSPSC,” said the DCP at a press conference.
The duo, according to the Hyderabad police, managed to steal the data from the computer of the confidential section using the IT knowledge of Rajasekhar Reddy. They transferred the data to Praveen Kumar’s pendrive and took a printout of the (civil) exam paper and General Studies paper and handed it over to the other accused Renuka and Dhakya Nayak by accepting Rupees 5 lakhs on March 2.
Later, another amount of rupees 5 lakhs was handed over to Praveen Kumar on March 6 after the TSPSC exam was conducted. Prior to this, Rajeshwar Nayak, who is the brother-in-law of Dhakya Nayak, contacted his cousin by the name of Kethavath Srinivas, a police constable working at Medchal police station. He was asked to purchase the question paper since he was also writing various exams.
However, Srinivas refused to purchase the papers since he was focusing on the Sub-Inspector recruitment. Later other persons Nilesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak who were appearing for the AE (Civil) Exam were also contacted by the prime accused. Rajeswhar Nayak had allegedly taken an amount of Rs.13.50 lakhs from them on the assurance of providing the AE Question Paper.
The police recovered four Pen drives, one Dell Laptop, one Dell Desktop PC and three mobile phones, and other incriminating material from the accused persons after arresting them in the TSPSC scam.
