Ranchi, May 21: A high-end smartphone, fished out from a commode, has helped the CBI tighten its noose around the lady CRPF officer, who was arrested on May 12 for her alleged involvement in a racket for recruiting "medically unfit" youths as constables in the paramilitary force.
Sources said Vinita Kumari, deputy commandant of the CRPF's 133rd battalion, had been suspended by the CRPF higher-ups for the alleged scam on May 6, a week before the anti-corruption branch of CBI raided her Alokapuri residence in Dibdih, Ranchi.
Sensing the approaching trouble, Vinita, who had joined the service in sports quota, allegedly destroyed most of the evidence before the CBI sleuths knocked on her door.
But, she forgot to erase call details and SMSes from her smartphone, providing CBI with enough clues to build up a case against her and her paramedic husband Arvind Kumar Singh, who was picked up from Dum Dum in Calcutta on May 13.
Sources in the central agency said that when CBI sleuths raided her residence, she hurriedly entered a toilet and flushed her mobile phone in the commode.
"We had thought that the game was over with the mobile phone. It was so disgusting to put the hand inside a commode. But we managed to fish it out. We then hurriedly dried it up and retrieved the entire data, which provided crucial electronic evidence to probe the scam. It has given us details of SMSes and calls made to candidates, among other clues. She was very uncooperative," a CBI source claimed.
The CBI sleuths also seized a diary, containing mobile phone numbers of candidates and amounts taken as advance from them. They also found around a dozen of bank passbooks and debit cards, four of which were registered on the couple's names while the remaining belonged to others.
The CBI source added that bank statements revealed huge transactions disproportionate to Vinita's known sources of income.
During three-day-long interrogation that concluded yesterday, Vinita, who was earlier remanded in judicial custody for 14 days on May 13, and her husband reportedly confessed to their involvement in the recruitment scam, helping "medically unfit" youths get jobs in the CRPF for the past two years.
"She had been running the racket with her husband for the last couple of years. She used to contact candidates seeking jobs in CRPF and claimed that doctors of the medical board were in her good books. She used to charge lakhs, depending on financial capacity and extent of unfitness, to facilitate recruitment of medically unfit candidates. Apart from her husband, some other doctors on the medical board for recruitment were also hand in glove with Vinita," said a senior CBI official.
Now, the CBI is procuring details of candidates from whom she had taken money for recruitment and those medically unfit candidates who got jobs.
Sources said that the CRPF's intelligence unit got evidence against the lady officer and put her mobile phone number under surveillance during a recent recruitment drive. On the basis of the evidence collected in the form of telephonic conversations, CRPF DIG Rajiv Rai had requested CBI to investigate the matter.
