GUWAHATI, June 9 - Twenty-five out of the 26 Assam Civil Service (ACS) and Assam Police Service (APS) officers summoned by Dibrugarh police in connection with the cash-for-jobs scam in the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) were today grilled for several hours at the Assam Police Special Branch headquarters at Kahilipara here.
Specimen signatures and handwritten notes of the officers were taken by the investigators in the presence of 12 independent witnesses who included lecturers and professors from Gauhati University and Gauhati Commerce College. Senior officials of the BSNL were also present in the administrative room of the Special Branch office as independent witnesses.
All the 25 summoned officials were made to write answers to questions after which the same were sealed in the presence of the independent witnesses.
The ACS and APS officials in question had allegedly secured their jobs by paying cash or taking undue favours from the suspended chairman of the APSC and the other arrested members of the Commission.
�The questions were set in such a manner that answers to those would comprise most letters of the alphabet which would come in handy while tallying the handwriting,� sources pointed out.
The sealed answer scripts will now be sent for forensic examination to different places, including Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad, to ascertain whether or not they match with the respective Common Competitive Examination (CCE) answer scripts of the candidates in question.
The sources added that one of the 26 government officials who could not be contacted would also be questioned soon. �While all the 25 accused officials were made to write in one room, they were, however, questioned individually,� the sources stated.
About the line of questioning, the sources informed that the accused were asked to clarify on various points vis-�-vis the examination and their links with the suspended APSC chairman and other arrested members of the Commission.
�It is only after the arrival of the forensic results that we will be able to chalk out our next course of action,� the sources added.
