2 more arrested in TSPSC paper leak case; youth bought DAO paper for girlfriend

HYDERABAD: More skeletons are tumbling out of the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) question papers leak scandal. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case arrested two more persons on Friday for their alleged involvement in the case.

The two have been identified as Loukik and Sushmita. With this, the number of people arrested in the case rose to 17. Interesting details surfaced following the arrest of Loukik and Sushmita. According to some reports, the two youngsters are lovers. Deeply smitten by his love for Sushmita, Loukik decided to put his future at stake and unfolded a misadventure to get his girlfriend over the line in the entrance test for the DAOs.

It was not immediately clear how Loukik got in touch with Praveen, one of the main accused in the scandal. But he managed to allegedly buy out the question paper for DAOs entrance test from Praveen by paying a whopping Rs 6 lakh. He reportedly gave the leaked paper to his girlfriend Sushmita to help her ace the entrance examination. The SIT found out the malpractice while checking Praveen’s bank statements. Going on the trail of the Rs 6 lakh transaction into Praveen’s account, the investigators established the alleged complicity of Loukik and Sushmita.

Both Loukik and Sushmita were remanded to 14-day judicial custody by a court in Hyderabad. The entrance examination for the recruitment of DAOs was conducted on February 26, 2023. The TSPSC cancelled the test after the question paper scandal broke out.

However, with the SIT going deeper into the scandal with each passing day, the escapade of Loukik and Sushmita also came to the fore, leading to their arrest on Friday. The probe team had already issued notices to several people to unravel all the facts and bust the wider net of the scam. The arrest of the two youngsters on Friday proved the premonitions that there is much more to the scam than meets the eye.

The SIT has already grilled the main accused in the case – Praveen, Rajasekhar Reddy, Renuka, Dakya Naik and Rajeswar, after obtaining their custody for three days last week. The investigators are also in the process of eliciting more information if the leaked DAO paper had been shared with anyone else by Loukik and Sushmita after it was bought from Praveen.

In an unprecedented move, the SIT officials have also issued notices to the board members of the TSPSC and even questioned the commission chairman Janardhan Reddy recently for several hours.