Bhubaneswar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has questioned four persons in connection with the Odisha Police Sub-Inspector (SI) recruitment scam, signifying the first round of interrogation after the central agency officially took over the probe.
As per sources, ten people had been summoned by the probe agency and only four of them appeared before investigating team at the CBI office in Bhubaneswar on Friday. The questioning lasted nearly eight hours. Among those grilled by the agency was a candidate who was earlier arrested by the Odisha Crime Branch and later released on bail.
The interrogation commenced in the afternoon and continued till late night before the four persons were allowed to leave. The information gathered during the interrogation would be cross-checked against documents and electronic evidence collected so far.
Sources said the remaining six individuals are likely to appear before the agency on Saturday. The CBI is also examining records of institutions associated with the online exam, communication data of the accused, and digital logs relevant to the recruitment process.
The agency is likely to seek more technical documents from private software firms and servers linked to the recruitment process as part of the investigation.
Notably, the central agency took over the probe after the Union government issued a notification on November 11, authorising the CBI to investigate alleged irregularities in the Odisha SI recruitment exam.
The case involves alleged tampering of examination data and unauthorised access to digital systems during the recruitment process. The CBI is now examining how the alleged manipulation occurred, who facilitated it, and whether monetary transactions were involved.
Before handing over the probe to the CBI, the Odisha Crime Branch had carried out several rounds of interrogation and obtained judicial custody of the key accused, Shankar Prusty.
The Crime Branch had also sought a Berhampur court’s permission to conduct polygraph tests on Shankar Prusty, head of Panchsoft Technologies, and another accused, Suresh Chandra Nayak, owner of Bhubaneswar-based Silicon TechLab.
During questioning, the two were reported to have given contradictory statements, prompting the request for lie-detection tests.
Prusty, considered a major suspect in the alleged data tampering, was arrested near the Indo-Nepal border after remaining untraceable for more than a month. He was brought to Bhubaneswar for interrogation and was also confronted with another accused, Muna Mohanty, to verify how recruitment-related data was accessed and modified.
