Himachal Pradesh Director General of Police Sanjay Kundu said that his department is taking it up with the Centre, highlighting the need for policy and a high-security press for the printing of papers for various written exams that is fail-proof.

This he said, has come to light after the involvement of an organized inter-state gang that had agents working in various printing presses where the question papers were printed.

Himachal police has managed to crack and made various arrests in the HP constable recruitment written exam that was conducted on 27 March all over the state.

Patting the back of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by DIG, Madhusudan for doing a commendable job in handling the complicated and complex case, he said that the investigation of this case is still under active process and few accused are yet to be arrested from various states.

“Chargesheet against the accused is in the final stage and same will be put in the High Court within a short period of time. Whenever other will be arrested and material is seized, the supplemantary challan will be put in the Court accordingly,” he said.

So far 171 accused have been arrested and 47 are still in judicial custody and those arrested include 116 candidates, 9 parents, 46 agents (21 from Himachal and 25 from various states).

The accused nabbed have been arrested 91 from Kangra, 23 Mandi, 20 Solan , 8 Una, 3 Kullu, 3 Bilaspur, 15 Hamirpur, 3 Chamba and 5 Sirmour.

There was a whole organized network of interstate kingpins and agents and most of the accused hailed from around 12 states including Bihar, UP, Delhi, Uttrakhand, Rajasthan and it was found that they had also been involved in many other paper leakage cases, informed Kundu.

DIG, Madhusudan said that the case had been handled by the SIT in a scientific and professional way and stress was laid on ensuring that there was no violation of human rights.

He said that in no way the SIT will spare anyone who is involved in the paper leak scam.

Around 1,80,000 candidates had applied for the vacancies, out of which around 75,000 had qualified the written examination. The SIT has recovered Rs 10,89,760 cash from agents, Rs 6000 Nepal currency, 6 cars, 185 mobile phones, navigation chip, 5 laptops, 1 DVR, 10 Hard Disks, 3 Pen Drive, 3 Memory Cards, 3 Jio-Fi/Dongle 8 original certificates of candidates (Matric and Plus two) from the agents and institutions involved and two account passbooks and two cheque books and transaction record of account with RTGS total 18 pages.