Title - Railway recruitment scam prime suspect held

The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested a prime suspect in the Railway recruitment racket that robbed thousands of jobless youth across the country of crores of rupees.

Ram Singh alias Ramnathuni Singh (53), who hails from Bihar and is settled in New Delhi, was arrested by a special team of the CBI’s Anti-Corruption Branch here, sources in the agency said.

Investigators said that Singh, along with his associate Navin Kumar, an absconding accused, was producing a Bollywood movie with the booty. Besides they had invested in real estate and held shares in benami names.

Singh played a crucial role in designing and developing the fake Railway recruitment website and appointed agents in many States to lure unemployed youth.

Promising jobs in the Group C category, they collected Rs. 6 lakh to 8 lakh from each candidate and sent fake appointment letters.

Their modus operandi was to send the selected candidates to Kolkata where they would undergo medical examination at the Railway Hospital.

“The trainees would be given a medical fitness certificate and then sent to the Howrah railway station to check the punctuality of trains as part of a training module. The entire process was only a gimmick and the accused took the help of some officials of Eastern Railway … it was only when the candidates went to join duty at different Railway establishments that they realised the fraud,” an investigator said.Special teams are on the lookout now for Navin Vinod and Mishra who were key players in the scam.

Even as the CBI exposed the racket, the fraud continued in a number of States, including Odisha, Bihar, Maharashtra and Delhi.

Singh was produced in a court here and lodged in the Puzhal Central Jail, according to CBI sources.