Bengaluru: City police have launched a manhunt for seven staff members of the Institute of Wood Science and Technology (IWST), Malleswaram, accused of securing their jobs by sending impersonators to write recruitment examinations on their behalf.The accused are six multi-tasking staffers (MTS) and a forest guard, appointed between 2018 and 2022. They have been identified as Dinesh, Sudhir, Prince, Sonu, Praveen and Rajkumar, all MTS, and Sunil Kumar Yadav, a forest guard. Five of them are from Haryana and two from Rajasthan. Police said all the accused have gone incommunicado and switched off their mobile phones.
The case was registered after the handwriting of the accused did not match their examination answer scripts. Shakti Singh, director, Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education–IWST, lodged a complaint with Sadashivnagar police.According to it, handwriting samples from undertakings submitted at the time of joining and other official records were compared with the answer scripts. “There was a difference between the two,” the complaint stated.Police also examined CCTV footage from the examination centres. While footage was not available from the centre where Dinesh wrote the exam, footage from the other centres showed different individuals appearing and writing the exams in the names of the accused.The answer scripts and handwriting samples were sent to a forensic science laboratory, which confirmed that the accused did not write the exams themselves, police said.The case has been registered under provisions of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections 336 (forgery) and 340 (offences relating to forged documents and electronic records).
