CBI books three Army officers in academy recruitment scam
11 Jan 2014
The armed forces seem to be rapidly losing their lustre as the one Indian institution of integrity. On Friday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked three serving Lieutenant Colonels for allegedly aiding and abetting unqualified candidates to get into the prestigious Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun.
Lieutenant Colonels Akhilesh Mishra, Jagdish Bishnoi and Ambarish Tiwari have been charged with issuing fake experience certificates to candidates during recruitments for group C and D cadres in 2011-2012. A case was filed against them earlier this week.
The accused have been charged with forgery, conspiracy and issuing fake certificates to candidates. They are likely to be interrogated soon and arrests may also be made, according to the CBI.
The accused officers were in a position to influence recruitments, and are alleged to have issued forged documents to pave the way for the recruitment of 34 officer-level candidates, and perhaps worse still, helped in replacing the original answer sheets of 16 others to help them clear the written test.
The IMA had in 2011-12 recruited 286 group C and D employees under rigged conditions. A spokesman for the IMA said that during the authentication process, a large number of documents and certificates were found to be faked.
''The CBI came into the picture because an alarming number of such cases were found at this time,'' IMA spokesman Prashant Tripathi said.