Thiruvananthapuram: A Crime Branch probe concluded that two leaders of the Students' Federation of India (SFI), who were accused of stabbing a student at the University College in Thiruvananthapuram recently, had secured top ranks in a police recruitment test by unfair means. The duo, R Sivaranjith and AN Naseem, are remanded in jail in connection with the stabbing case.
Sivaranjith had topped the rank list and Naseem secured 28th position in the civil police officer test conducted by the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC) in July, 2018. The rank list was published on July 1, 2019.
During interrogation by the Crime Branch sleuths in the jail here for five hours, Sivaranjith couldn't answer correctly a single question posed by the interrogators from the same PSC question paper. Nazeem too was at his wit's end. Both admitted that they did copy answers during the test.
During questioning, both initially stuck to their claim that they could score high marks in the public exam with proper preparation. But it all fell apart before the tactical questioning of DySP K Harikrishnan and SI Anoop. However, the accused stopped short of admitting copying from SMSes using smartphone or smartwatch as was reported earlier.
When asked how did they score high ranks, the accused replied "With proper preparation; most questions were easy; guessed a few and by luck, those answers were correct." When the team repeated questions from the question paper one by one, the accused failed to answer any and claimed they had copied from candidates seated next to them. When the investigators countered them by saying that the candidates next to them didn't make the cut, Naseem said "Don’t know how, but that’s how I did it."
Sivaranjith was stumped and fumbled in his bid to reply. He was almost speechless when asked who had sent him 96 messages during the test.
The interrogators showed them the content of the messages on his phone seized by the cops earlier.
Earlier, PSC’s internal inquiry had found that Sivaranjith and Naseem received 96 and 78 phone messages respectively within 75 minutes during the exam. The Crime Branch wanted to ascertain how they received these messages in the hall. When the duo stuck to their initial stance, the cops asked them questions from the same test.
The PSC had identified that the irregularities occurred during its police test conducted at the University College. The public examiner later shared the information with the Crime Branch.
Subsequently, a case was registered against five people, including Sivaranjtih, Naseem, a policeman named Gokul from the SAP Camp at Perurkkada, PP Pranav and Kallara native Safeer.
Both Gokul and Safeer are absconding, the police say. Their phones are reportedly switched off.
Sivaranjtih, Naseem and Pranav are student of the University College and are SFI activists. Pranav, who got second rank in the PSC test, too is an accused in the case of stabbing one Akhil Chandran at the University College on July 12.
Meanwhile, the police have also failed to nab one of the 11 accused in the stabbing case, against whom fresh lookout notices were issued.