Lucknow: Two years after taking over the Kanpur defence recruitment scam case in December last year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has questioned several people linked to the case, including beneficiaries Utkarsh Srivatsava and Ravi Kant Pandey, sources said on Tuesday.A CBI source related to the probe told IANS, “The agency questioned beneficiaries Srivastava and Pandey at its office in Lucknow on February 1 and February 9 respectively.”The source said that the agency also confronted Srivatsava along with Mohommad Alim, one of the board members. They were called on the same day on February 1.
The source said that two out of five beneficiaries and accused have reported to the CBI till date.The source said that CBI also questioned another board member Sunil Kumar on February 24 this year.The CBI action is based on the case it filed against Santosh Kumar Tiwari, Deputy Controller in the Material Division of the Controllerate of Quality Assurance CQA(M), who was the presiding officer of the recruitment board and beneficiaries Pandey, Srivatsava, Arti Gupta, Pratibha Mishra and Arpit Singh and other unknown persons.The officials in Kanpur had organised a recruitment drive for six posts of Lower Division Clerk (LDC) in the Directorate General of Quality Assurance, which comes under the Union Ministry of Defence.
For this purpose, advertisements were issued in 2015 and appointments were made in 2017.An internal inquiry committee headed by Brigadier Sudhindra Itnal had found serious irregularities in the recruitment process. Following the submission of a report in this regard, the recruitment board itself was dissolved by the competent authority and the services of the appointed LDCs were terminated on November 28, 2018.In a letter to the CBI on August 10, 2018, the Department of Defence Production (DDP) mentioned “serious irregularities” of a criminal nature concerning the appointment of six LDCs in 2016 by the now-dissolved recruitment board in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur.