The General in the Strongroom: The Fall of ADGP Amrit Paul and the 545 PSI Scam

By Editorial Investigations Desk *Archival Case Dossier INC-2022-KA-KALABURAGI-014 | Verified High Court, CID & Police Record*

2. The Bluetooth Network of Kalaburagi

The initial police investigation, initiated by Chowk Police Station in Kalaburagi under FIR No. 62/2022 on April 9, 2022, focused on the exam centre itself.

Within days, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) took over the case and raided Jnana Jyothi English Medium School.

The CID dismantled what appeared to be a well-oiled local syndicate: * The School Principal and Invigilators: Divya Hagaragi, the president of the school management, alongside Principal Kashinath and headmaster Archana, had instructed invigilators to turn a blind eye during the examination. * The Kingpin: Behind the operation stood Rudragouda Patil (R.D. Patil), a politically connected contractor and examination broker who operated a network across Kalaburagi, Yadgir, and Bidar. * The Modus Operandi: Patil provided candidates with micro-Bluetooth transceivers stitched into shirts, paired with flesh-colored earpieces. For candidates who chose not to use hardware, invigilators allowed them to leave their OMR sheets completely blank. In the thirty-minute window between the collection of answer sheets and their formal packing into cloth parcels, teachers and staff used black pens to fill in the correct answers.

Divya Hagaragi fled into neighboring Maharashtra before being arrested by CID tracking teams in Pune on April 28, 2022. R.D. Patil was arrested from a farmhouse.

At that stage, the government and the police establishment portrayed the scandal as a localized district-level breach—an unfortunate incident of cheating at an isolated examination centre in Kalaburagi.

On April 29, 2022, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai announced that the state government was annulling the entire examination of 54,000 candidates to protect the integrity of the police force, promising a fresh re-conduct.

Yet as CID detectives analyzed forensic reports of master OMR sheets from examination centres across Bengaluru, Tumakuru, Mangaluru, and Belagavi, an unsettling realization dawned on the investigators: OMR sheets from dozens of candidates who had never set foot in Kalaburagi had also been tampered with.

The fraud had not occurred in the classrooms of Jnana Jyothi School. It had occurred inside the supreme sanctuary of the Karnataka State Police: the recruitment cell strongroom at Carlton House in Bengaluru.

4. The Arrest of the Three-Star General

On the morning of Monday, July 4, 2022, ADGP Amrit Paul arrived at the CID headquarters for what was ostensibly his third round of questioning as a department witness.

He walked into the chamber of the Director General of Police (CID), P.S. Sandhu.

For hours, investigators presented Paul with technical evidence: electronic access logs, cell-tower telemetry placing DySP Shanthakumar outside the strongroom at midnight, banking money trails, and the confessional statements of four subordinate officers who stated under Section 164 CrPC that the keys had been delivered on the ADGP’s direct instructions.

At 14:15 IST, the CID team informed the three-star officer that he was under formal arrest.

Paul was escorted down the steps of Carlton House by officers who had saluted him days earlier. He was taken to Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital for mandatory medical screening, produced before the 1st Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, and remanded to judicial custody in Central Prison, Parappana Agrahara.

It was an unprecedented moment in the seventy-five-year history of independent India’s police establishment: the first time a serving Additional Director General of Police had been arrested, handcuffed, and jailed for orchestrating examination fraud.

In August 2022, the CID filed a comprehensive 1,200-page chargesheet before the Special Court for Prevention of Corruption Cases in Bengaluru.

The chargesheet indicted 106 individuals—including ADGP Amrit Paul, DySP Shanthakumar, Divya Hagaragi, R.D. Patil, and candidate beneficiaries—under IPC Sections 420 (Cheating), 120B (Conspiracy), 465, 468, 471 (Forgery of public records), and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Crucially, the CID invoked the draconian provisions of the Karnataka Control of Organized Crime Act (KCOCA), legally categorizing the police recruitment syndicate as an organized crime syndicate.

6. The Fortress Retest: January 23, 2024

Determined to prevent a repeat of the Carlton House disaster, the Karnataka government stripped the State Police Recruitment Cell of its authority to administer entrance tests.

The responsibility for conducting the fresh 545 PSI written examination was handed to an independent statutory testing body: the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA).

On Tuesday, January 23, 2024, the fresh re-test was conducted across Karnataka.

The security apparatus deployed for the January exam was the most stringent in the state’s administrative history: * The Barcode and OMR Overhaul: The legacy OMR format was redesigned with encrypted barcodes; question papers were stored in biometric digital vaults requiring multi-authority cryptographic keys. * Dress Code and Frisking: Candidates were prohibited from wearing shoes, socks, belts, wristwatches, or metal jewelry; handheld metal detectors and door-frame scanners were installed at every classroom door. * Biometric Authentication: Every candidate’s Aadhaar-linked thumbprint was verified in real time before entering the hall to prevent proxy impersonation.

The re-examination concluded peacefully across all centres without a single report of paper leakage, Bluetooth transmission, or OMR manipulation.

In March 2024, the KEA declared the revised results, finally completing a recruitment cycle that had remained paralyzed for nearly three years.

8. Chronological Timeline of Developments