The Enforcement Directorate’s probe into the alleged Chhattisgarh Public Service Commission recruitment scam is picking up pace. Investigators are now piecing together an alleged Rs 3.2 crore financial trail, alongside digital chats that surfaced during the case.
Around a dozen people — candidates among them — have been summoned for questioning as the agency digs into claims of a leaked paper and manipulation in the selection process. Statements are being recorded, and documents tied to the case are being pored over.
This latest push follows the arrest of Chetan Borghariya on September 11. Borghariya, who once served as OSD to former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and now holds the post of Additional Collector in Balrampur-Ramanujganj, was taken in under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and handed six days in ED custody.
The agency’s findings so far point to three men — Utkarsh Chandrakar, Anil Chandrakar and Dr Vikash Chandrakar — who allegedly pocketed over Rs 3 crore from CGPSC State Service Examination 2021 candidates, promising them advance question papers and a guaranteed selection. What investigators are trying to nail down now is simpler to state than to prove: how much of that Rs 3.2 crore actually made its way to Borghariya, and where it went from there.
The trail back to Borghariya isn’t new. Searches at his premises on September 1 turned up mobile phones and other digital devices, and forensic teams combing through them say they’ve found exchanges between Borghariya and Utkarsh Chandrakar — conversations touching on money changing hands and demands to return or hand over funds.
Also under the scanner: Figurecave E-Com (OPC) Private Limited, a company the ED suspects was used to layer and move the funds around.
The case itself traces back further still — to an FIR filed by the Economic Offences Wing and the Anti-Corruption Bureau over alleged corruption and rigging in the CGPSC State Service Examinations of 2020 and 2021. The CBI later stepped in, filing its own FIR against former CGPSC chairman Taman Singh Sonwani and others.