Biman High-Ups Involved in Recruitment Question Leak: DB

Detectives have indicated the involvement of senior officials in leaking the recruitment examination questions for Biman Bangladesh Airlines.

later, a court granted six-day remand to the five officials and employees of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, who were arrested on the charge of leaking recruitment examination question papers.

Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Shanta Akter's court granted the remand today Saturday (October 22).

The remanded accused is - Aolad Hossain (21), Md. Jahangir Alam (36), Enamul Haque (28), Md. Haroon-ur-Rashid (40) and Mahfuzul Alam (31).

On this day, the police produced them in court. After that, the police applied for their 10-day remand showing the arrest under Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the capital's Dakshinkhan police station. After the hearing, the court remanded them for six days. Earlier, they were arrested on Friday night.

The hour-long MCQ exam scheduled for Friday was suspended after the authorities arrested five low-level employees of the carrier over the leak with the help of the National Security Intelligence, Harunor Rashid, chief of the police's Detective Branch, said on Saturday.

Police found four diaries recording details of various transactions, including the sources and recipients of the money the suspects made from selling the questions. They also recovered copies of question papers, mobile phones, Tk 100,000 in cash, stamped papers, bank cheques and the admit cards of several examinees.

The group admitted to earning vast sums of money by leaking recruitment questions, Additional Commissioner Harun said at a media briefing.

A committee, whose members include the general manager and deputy general manager of Biman, is responsible for preparing the questions and overseeing the recruitment exam process.

Harun believes the arrestees had close ties with senior officials at the national flag carrier. "We will find out how they managed to slip it past the committee and leak the paper. At the same time, the five arrestees will be remanded for interrogation in custody and senior officials will also be questioned to gauge their involvement."

Harun claims he has received the names of 'several' Biman officials with alleged links to the leak and they are now in the DB's cross hairs. "We will try to find out how much of the money taken by the arrestees was shared with senior officials."

No sooner had the notice for the recruitment exam been published than the cabal of around seven people set about with their plans to leak the questions, setting a price range and looking for buyers, according to Harun.

They charged between Tk 200,000 and Tk 700,000 for each paper, according to him. But payment for the question papers were not limited to money -- they were also exchanged for land and properties.

They initially sought Tk 700,000 for each paper, but later dropped the asking price down to Tk 200,000, said Harun. "Not only that, but those who could not stump up the money handed over the titles to their land and houses through agreements laid out on non-judicial stamps, some of which have been recovered."_agencies