On July 21, the owner of a Uttar Pradesh-based printing press in India was arrested in connection with the Himachal Pradesh Police constable recruitment paper leak. Sailendra Vikram Singh, a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Vaishali, was arrested by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Himachal Pradesh Police in connection with the case, according to a press note.
Back on May 6, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had nullified the written tests to recruit police constables amid reports of the leak, and on May 31, the SIT arrested a part-time employee of the aforementioned press, who the DGP claims leaked the paper. The SIT has claims that he had leaked the question paper in March before giving it to those accused in the case.
On March 27th as many as 75,803 candidates had appeared for the exam, at 81 different centers spanning 11 districts. The police said that of the 121 people arrested in the police constable paper leak case so far, 85 were candidates taking the tests, three were parents of candidates, and 33 were agents (18 from within HP and 15 from outside). Of the agents implicated in the case, Director-General of Police (DGP) Sanjay Kundu disclosed that Rs 10.34 lakh, 6000 Nepalese currency units, six cars, 154 cellphones, five laptops, one DVR, 10 hard disks, six original candidate certificates (along with photocopies and original identification documents) and an agreement filed with a coaching center were all seized from the agents.
Kundu further explained that a security guard at a private company in Okhla, Delhi passed the question key down a line of associates and family. The DGP, meanwhile, revealed that as of now, three coaching centers spanning 2 police departments have been found to be involved, and added that gangs networked across at least 7 other regions are also directly implicated. The SIT is still working to put together a complete picture of the operation, and the coaching centers across the state, as well as several neighboring states, are currently under police scanners, while teams have also been dispatched to other states in the hopes of nabbing other architects of the leak
The SIT probing the leak has sent a set of distinct questionnaires to police officers involved in the examination process, including to the chairman of the police recruitment board, inspector general of police (IGP), JP Singh and 8 other members comprising the question paper setting and printing committees implicated in the case. The SIT meanwhile is also investigating whether the gang involved in the leak was involved in other papers leaks around the state.
The state’s home department had first notified the newly revised Himachal Pradesh Police Department Recruitment (Recruitment of Constable Rules) back in 2021 of the expansion of the Police Recruitment Board, and started an online process for applications. The board comprised an additional director general of police (armed police and training), all inspectors general (IGs range, welfare, and administration) and deputy inspectors general (DIGs, range), and was entrusted with the responsibility of supervising the recruitment process. At the district level, it comprised one commandant of the state police battalion nominated by the DIG or police superintendents (SPs) of concerned districts as well as a medical officer nominated by the chief medical officer.
On May 28th, Delhi’s health minister Satyendra Jain took aim at both Congress and one of his opposition parties, saying “There were paper leaks one after the other. Whether [the] police constable recruitment examination or the Junior office assistant or examination for recruitment of bus conductors, all the papers got leaked.”
Where Guardian from Wertheim Global Comes into Play
A national scandal involving insider corruption all the way up the chain of command, this whole spectacle can really be summed up in two words: Unsecured Documents. When those responsible with printing your documents are the ones capable of derailing your state’s entire police recruitment program, you really must begin to question if merely having documents on a content server is enough to protect them. The clear answer: of course it’s not. Content servers aren’t designed to flag internal abuse of those documents, unlike Guardian, which is created precisely for this specific purpose. With its predictive analytics, Guardian can flag users who exceed their usual patterns of behavior for any number of activities on your server. Viewing Documents. Downloads. Even, dare we say, printing…