SCAMSTERS INC.

The CBI on Monday filed a chargesheet against Uttar Pradesh Home Secretary Mahesh Kumar Gupta and two others for alleged manipulation in selecting candidates for state's Information department in 1998 and taking ‘illegal gratification’.

The chargesheet was filed in the designated CBI court at Lucknow against Gupta, 1987 batch IAS officer, Prabhat Kumar Sinha, a Provincial Civil Services officer and the then Additional Director and Raj Gopal Singh Verma, the then Deputy Director of UP Information Department.

According to the chargesheet, Gupta, during his tenure of Director of Information, was heading a committee which would make appointment for Group "C" in the Information department.

The CBI alleged that Verma, who was appointed as nodal officer by the Committee, tabulated the results of the written test in a computer and later took a copy of the same in a floppy disk and loaded the same at his home computer.

"Thereafter, they started contacting the prospective candidates and collected illegal gratification from them for selecting them for the posts," the chargesheet claimed and annexed statements of number of candidates recorded by the CBI that they had paid money to the Deputy Director when he visited their places.

"In the process, against the demand of Rs 20 lakh by Gupta for selecting the candidates for the post out of the amount collected by them, a sum of Rs 6.5 lakh was handed over by Verma to Sinha, who along with a witness went to the residence of Gupta and paid the same to him," it said.

After such manipulation and allegedly receiving bribe, the list of successful candidates so selected was prepared and put up after being duly approved by Gupta but was shot down by the then Chief Minister Kalyan Singh.

Source: Indian Express