A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court has delivered a significant verdict more than a decade after a major recruitment scandal gripped the Navy, convicting two individuals involved in the leaking of an exam paper. Former Naval Commander Ramesh Chand Saini, who was serving at INS Angre and presiding over the Western Naval Command’s recruitment board, along with Rambir Singh Rawat, the proprietor of Manasa International Academy in Visakhapatnam, have been found guilty of conspiracy and criminal misconduct regarding the 2010 Lower Division Clerk (LDC) examination.
Both individuals received sentences of three years of rigorous imprisonment and were fined ₹50,000 each. They face an additional month of simple imprisonment if they fail to pay the fine. However, the court acquitted them of more severe charges such as cheating, forgery, and the use of forged documents.
The scandal was unveiled when CBI officials conducted a raid at a lodge near Crawford Market in Mumbai just before the LDC exam was set to take place on September 26, 2010. During this operation, investigators discovered exam papers that were identical to those prepared by Commander Saini, both in terms of content and sequence.
The court established that Saini had sole custody of the exam paper, which he had transferred onto a pen drive and taken to Pune for printing at Atharva Consultancy and Allied Services. Witnesses from the printing facility confirmed that the printing was conducted under Saini’s supervision, further solidifying the prosecution’s case.
After the printing, Rawat disseminated the leaked paper to candidates, with similar copies later confiscated from his academy during the investigation.
In a related development, four other accused individuals were acquitted. This group included Ram Chandra Naik, an administrative officer at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai; Hoshiar Singh Rawat, a farmer from Haryana; D Srinivasa Murthy, an administrative officer at the Eastern Naval Command in Visakhapatnam; and Kuldeep Kumar, a private employee from Bihar. Special CBI Judge Amit V Kharkar noted that the prosecution had not convincingly established their involvement, pointing to significant gaps in the evidence and the fact that the proprietor of Atharva Consultancy had passed away before the trial.
The court remarked that while Saini and Rawat acted with a clear intention to deceive both the Indian Navy and the general public, reasonable doubt regarding the involvement of the other accused warranted their acquittal.
