The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has lodged an FIR against three medical official of Border Security Force (BSF) under prevention of corruption act and allegedly hiring staff at Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) by flouting rules.

The FIR was lodged after a written complaint was received in this respect on March 22, 2022 from Ayush Mani Tiwari (IPS), Inspector General (Pers), Directorate General, Border Security Force, for taking necessary action.

Besides the three medical officials, five candidates have also been named in the FIR.

Accused have been identified as Dr. S.K. Jha, CMO (SG), CH BSF, Kolkata; Dr. Mrinal Hazarika, CMO (SG), CH BSF, Jodhpur; Dr. Bani Saikia Chetia, Specialist Grade-I, CH BSF, Jalandhar; Vikram Singh Devthia, Gagan Sharma, Karan Singh Koli, Gurjeet Singh, Mukul Vyas and others.

"The ITBP was designated by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as Nodal Force for the recruitment of Medical Officers for CAPF through Medical Officer Selection Board (MOSB)- 2021. The recruitment test was conducted at various centres of CAPFs. The said test was also conducted in respect of 561 candidates at Frontier HQ BSF Jodhpur between March 2, 2022 to March 16, 2022," a seniot CBI official said.

"P.V. Rama Shastry, IPS, Additional DG of BSF who happened to be the Chairman of the Interview board on March 10, 2022, informed DG ITBP that certain overweight candidates who were found unfit by the Medical Examination Test Board subsequently were found/declared fit by Review Medical Examination (RME) with an unusual reduced weight," reads the complaint.

"The RME comprising three Medical Officers of BSF conducted the review medical examination test just after three days of the date of PST and recorded unrealistically reduced weight of such five candidates than that of the weight recorded during the Physical Standard Test (PST). The weight reduction in RME, conducted after three days, is found to be unrealistically low. In one case a candidate weighed 91.820 Kg, on March 5, 2022, whereas the medical review board recorded his weight as 81 kg with a difference of 10.280 kg on March 8, 2022," it added.

Accordingly, a committee of three doctors was constituted at the centre for measurement of weight in respect of these five candidates. Weight measurement of four candidates (with reduced weight by RME) was again taken after two days on the respective weighing scale used PST as well as RME and their weight tallied to be almost same.

"One candidate did report before the said. This suggests to the fact that the weight of said five candidates were improperly recorded during RME. Thereafter, the RME was replaced by another board by ITBP for all candidates," the complaint noted.

The DG, ITBP urged the BSF for instituting a formal enquiry under BSF Rule since all the members of the RME were from BSF. The senior officials of the security forces learnt that few BSF officials were "involved in the corrupt practice and they finally decided to approach the CBI after which an FIR was lodged". [IANS/JS]