Bagalkot native Jnanadeva Jadhav, arrested in the fake recruitment scam on Wednesday, taught Kannada to Animal Husbandry Minister Prabhu Chauhan for a year.
Jadhav, in his 40s, is accused of running a fake, but well-organised and highly sophisticated recruitment scam in the department.
The Sanjaynagar police, led by officer Balaraj J, found that Jadhav created fake documents of the recruitment at a cyber cafe in Bagalkot.
The police plan to take him to the cyber cafe for a spot inspection (mahazar). He is in police custody for eight days.
Jadhav was introduced to Chauhan after the latter became a minister.
The minister hired him as his Kannada teacher in 2019, and Jadhav worked in his office for a year.
Jadhav went back to Bagalkot by the end of 2020 and started constructing his house there. But he ran out of money.
He had a few copies of a government notification for recruitment to various vacant posts and a copy of candidates selected.
He took them to Bagalkot and created a fake recruitment order.
Jadhav contacted a few government job aspirants and promised to place them in jobs in the department.
He created copies of the recruitment notification and the selection list in the cyber cafe.
Jadhav later destroyed the hard copies, but sent soft copies to candidates by WhatsApp. He took Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh from each candidate.
He claimed he didn’t upload any notification or selection list on to the department’s website.
Many candidates realised that Jadhav was cheating them and got their money back by threatening to go to the police. But he is yet to refund money to some of the aspirants.
Two such aspirants have been traced, but they are yet to give their statements, a police officer said.
According to the complaint filed by N Ramesh, joint director (administration), animal husbandry & veterinary services department, Jadhav ‘issued’ a notification to fill up 93 vacancies of first division assistants (FDAs), second division assistants (SDAs) and ‘D’ group workers.
He created a fake document of 63 ‘selected’ candidates and sent a copy to the chief minister’s office.
Jadhav reportedly told the police that he had cheated job aspirants to the tune of Rs 25 lakh.
While some paid him through online mode, most candidates paid him in cash.