Patna, Jun 19 (PTI) The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday conducted multi-state searches in connection with a money laundering investigation into an alleged scam in the recruitment of police constables in Bihar during 2023, official sources said.

The masterminds of the alleged scam are the same as that of the NEET-UG paper leak 'scam' of 2024, they said.

At least a dozen locations of private entities like agents, exam paper leak syndicate members and their associates in Patna and Nalanda in Bihar, Ranchi (Jharkhand), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) and Kolkata (West Bengal) were raided under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources said.

A press in Kolkata in which the exam papers were printed was also covered by the investigators of the federal probe agency, they said.

The agency seized documents like answer sheets, OMR codes, hand-written notes related to IDs and names of candidates apart from their education certificates, the sources said.

The constable recruitment exam was aimed to fill 21,391 vacancies across various units of the Bihar Police.

The examination was conducted at 529 centres across 37 districts of Bihar on October 1, 2023 attracting over 18 lakh aspirants.

Following allegations of the exam paper leak, it was cancelled by the state's Central Selection Board of Constable (CSBC) on October 3 that year.

The money laundering case stems from some Bihar Police (economic offences unit or EOU) FIRs. The ED suspects money laundering in this case as a gang of agents generated "proceeds of crime" by leaking the question papers and selling them to aspirants, and used the money given by the candidates to create personal assets.

Some Bihar Police officials are also under the scanner of the ED, according to the sources.

The state police had arrested seven private people in this case, including three from West Bengal. An inter-state gang headed by Sanjeev Mukhiya was termed by the police as the perpetrators of this paper leak.

Mukhiya has worked as a technical assistant in a government college in Nalanda district. He is currently lodged in judicial custody.

The Bihar EOU found that an accused named Kaushik Kumar Kar had a Kolkata-based firm, Caltex Multiventure Pvt Ltd, and he was awarded the contract to print and supply the question papers for the constable recruitment examination.

However, it was discovered that Caltex Multiventure was a one-room "shell" company with no employees, and printing and supply of question papers was outsourced to a company named Blessing Secured Press Pvt Ltd, where Kar's wife was a director.

Kar, as per the EOU, had allegedly been involved in some earlier cases related to leak of question papers for recruitment exams conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Public Services Commission (UPPSC) in 2019 and the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) in 2022. He went on to establish Blessing Secured Press Pvt Ltd.

The EOU said in a statement in 2023 that it noticed "serious" deviations from standard operating procedures regarding the transportation, storage, and handover of question papers by Kar and his associates.

Instead of sending the question papers to the state treasury as agreed, Kar's affiliated firms sent them to a warehouse owned by DP World Express Logistic Pvt Ltd in Patna, where they remained for six days without notifying the authorities.

During this period, members of the Sanjeev Mukhiya gang were contacted by Kar, and the question papers were opened and circulated among gang members for further distribution to aspirants, who paid substantial sums for the advance knowledge, according to the EOU.

During the conduct of the examination on October 1, 2023, several candidates were caught cheating using electronic devices and other fraudulent methods, leading to the exam's postponement.

Subsequent complaints of irregularities prompted the cancellation of the exam and the postponement of tests scheduled for October 7 and October 15 (2023).

Last year, the EOU of Bihar Police had arrested Sanjeev Mukhiya, the alleged mastermind behind the NEET (UG)-2024 paper leak case, from the state capital.

The NEET-UG is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions.

In 2024, the exam was conducted on May 5 at 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 abroad. More than 23 lakh candidates appeared for the test.

The Bihar Police launched a crackdown after getting inputs of an alleged leak of the paper and it soon snowballed into a major political issue.

The Union education ministry handed over the probe to the CBI, which had registered several FIRs in the case, taking over probes from different states including Bihar. PTI NES PKD KVK KVK