Rajasthan Police arrest five in major OMR sheet fraud, including senior RSSB official

Rajasthan Police’s Special Operations Group has arrested five individuals, including a senior technical official of the Rajasthan Staff Selection Board, in connection with a massive OMR sheet fraud affecting thousands of candidates.

Officials said the arrests are linked to manipulation of results in three major recruitment exams conducted in 2019: the Supervisor (Women Empowerment) Direct Recruitment Examination 2018, Laboratory Assistant Recruitment Examination 2018, and Agriculture Supervisor Recruitment Examination 2018.

These exams were held for a total of 3,212 posts, with over 9.4 lakh candidates applying.

Among those arrested is Sanjay Mathur, who served as Deputy Director (System Analyst) and Technical Head at RSSB.

According to the SOG, he oversaw the scanning of OMR sheets and preparation of results, and investigators allege he colluded with others to illegally alter candidates’ marks.

Additional Director General of Police (SOG) Vishal Bansal said the fraud involved large-scale manipulation of exam data.

The scanning and data processing of OMR sheets had been outsourced to Delhi-based Raghav Limited, and two employees of the firm are also among those arrested.

The SOG claims that after scanning, the accused tampered with digital data, inflating marks of selected candidates to ensure their selection.

In some cases, scores of candidates originally between 30 and 60 were shown as over 180 after alteration using software tools.

The fraud was uncovered when RSSB re-scanned the original OMR sheets and discovered major mismatches between the answers marked and previously declared results.

Investigators also found that some of the main accused were part of the committee probing the irregularities, raising concerns about internal influence.

Those arrested include Sanjay Mathur, Praveen Gangwal (programmer, RSSB), Shadan Khan, Vinod Kumar Gaur, and Poonam Mathur. Police said the accused also accepted money from candidates in exchange for manipulating results.

The case has been registered under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Rajasthan Public Examinations Act, and the Information Technology Act. The investigation is ongoing, and authorities indicated further arrests are possible.