The high court on Tuesday denied anticipatory bail to CID constable Santosh Yadav, a prime accused in the police recruitment scam.

Yadav and two former Calcutta police constables have been accused of fielding dummies for some of the candidates who had applied for a police job. “The trio used to take Rs 1.5-3 lakh from a candidate for fielding the dummy,” said state counsel Pradip Roy.

“Santosh Yadav’s arrest is crucial to the case,” said a detective department official.

In April, Calcutta police had blown the lid off the racket by arresting five constables who got the job without appearing in the mandatory test, held in Konnagar in January.

An investigation revealed that they were represented by dummy candidates provided by Gopal Das and Bappa Das, who lost their jobs as police constables in 2006.

“Since their dismissal, they have been fraudulently operating as job agents,” said an officer.

The sleuths came to know that Yadav, acting on orders from the Das duo, used to tamper with the photographs of job applicants with help from a photographer.

Yadav’s lawyer Angshuman Bera argued that his client had been falsely implicated.