Jharkhand Excise Constable Exam: 166 Arrested in Paper Leak Scheme Sent To Jail

Ranchi: A total of 166 persons, including 159 aspirants of the Jharkhand Excise Constable Competitive Examination 2023 and members of a solver gang, were sent to judicial custody on Monday.

They were arrested from an under-construction nursing home in Rargaon, under Tamar police station limits on the outskirts of Ranchi, just hours before the scheduled examination, police said.According to officials, the gang had brought aspirants from various locations and housed them in the isolated building to prepare them using purported leaked question papers. Each candidate was allegedly charged between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 15 lakh on the promise of access to the exam paper.The Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC), however, went ahead with Sunday’s written examination, stating that no paper leak had occurred following a thorough inquiry.All the accused have been booked under charges of organised crime, criminal conspiracy, cheating and fraud. Of the 166 arrested, 159 are aspirants, five are alleged members of the paper-leak gang, and two are drivers, police said.While producing them before the court, police stated that remand would be sought if required during the course of further investigation.

Sources said that 24 of the arrested individuals are from different parts of Bihar, while the rest are from Jharkhand, primarily from Giridih and Hazaribag.Ranchi Rural SP Praveen Pushkar said, “The gang members had called aspirants to various locations in and around Ranchi. They were then transported in four-wheelers to an under-construction nursing facility near Rargaon village in Tamar. The plan was to take them directly from the building to examination centres on Sunday.”Pushkar added that one of the accused, Atul Vats, is the alleged leader of the solver gang involved in paper leaks of competitive examinations. He is also wanted by the Economic Intelligence Wing in Patna and has previously been jailed in connection with a constable examination paper leak in Rajasthan. He is reportedly wanted in several other states as well.City SP Paras Rana said the gang’s primary objective was to make money by defrauding aspirants through fake promises of question paper leaks.

He added that the gang had also taken blank cheques from candidates, to be encashed after they cleared the examination.He further said that the gang operated using a two-pronged strategy: identifying aspirants willing to resort to unfair means, and attempting to procure question papers of competitive exams. In this case, the gang failed to obtain the original paper and instead provided fake question papers to candidates ahead of the examination.