New Delhi , May 6: A CRPF inspector-general and a commandant have been arrested for running a recruitment racket after a former chief of the paramilitary force warned that officers along with touts were offering jobs for a price.

Besides the two officers, a dismissed constable and five touts were among those picked up from Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana in CBI raids across five states last night that yielded more than Rs 1 crore in cash and receipts of fixed deposits worth lakhs.

CRPF director-general A.S. Gill said “whatever action required under law will be initiated” against those found guilty, and added he was thinking of changing the recruitment process that involves a 3km run, a written test and interview followed by a medical examination.

Sources in the paramilitary force — the country’s largest — hinted they were planning to do away with the interview but wouldn’t say anything more.

CBI sources said over Rs 1 crore in cash and documents were found on inspector-general (Bihar sector) Pushkar Singh, the commandant of the 132 battalion in Jamshedpur Yadavendra Singh, tout and “mastermind” Mukesh Kumar, his wife Swati Bhardwaj, Tripurari Kumar alias Babloo, Sindhunath Sharma, Dilip Kumar alias Pappu and Pargat Singh.

The raids — across 20 locations in Patna, Jamshedpur, Muzaffarpur, Gaya, Daltonganj, Munger, Bhagalpur, Ranchi, Mokamaghat, Aligarh, Yamunanagar and Mohali — followed a request from former CRPF chief V.K. Joshi.

“Shortly we are going to recruit constables on a large scale and we have received complaints of rigging and corruption. Kindly keep a watch,” Joshi is said to have written to the CBI in a confidential letter last November.

Sources said two others, a deputy inspector-general in Bihar and a commandant in Jharkhand, were also suspects.

The sources said the touts charged Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh for a general duty constable’s job, “subject to negotiation”.

“The inspector-general is believed to have told candidates to approach authorities through the touts if they expected to get a job,” a CBI source said.

Hundreds of thousands of youths apply for jobs of general duty constables who are combat soldiers and for jobs of cooks, cobblers or drivers.

CBI sources said so deep-rooted was the racket that investigators even found die used for printing certificates and stamps of agencies that certify these special trade candidates.