Jail guards’ recruitment: 2 aspirants booked for switching RFID cards

MUMBAI: Two candidates who participated in a recruitment drive for jail guards have been booked for cheating and personation after they allegedly exchanged their radio frequency identification tags (RFID) in order to clear the physical endurance test.
Recruitment is currently underway for 1,800 positions of jail guards, with physical tests like running being conducted at the Ghatkopar government railway police ground. Mumbai Police is providing security for and handling the recruitment drive for the state prisons department.
Officials from the Pant Nagar police station said that on Thursday morning, assistant police inspector Ashish Karle, who is posted at the police ground, noticed that some candidates were cheating during the physical endurance test.
“The 1,600-metre running test, which involves four rounds, was held around 10.30am. After the test, it was noticed that the timings of two candidates, identified as Ram Guntewad and Shridhar Pallewad – both from Nanded, were nearly the same. One clocked 4 minutes 45 seconds and the other, 4 minutes 44 seconds,” said a police officer.
The technical team which operated the radio frequency tags raised a query about the similarity of timings, after which Pallewad told the police that he had just run two of the four rounds.
“We suspect Pallewad ran two rounds and gave his RFID tag to Guntewad who ran the remaining two rounds wearing both RFID tags; he returned the tag to Guntewad just before completing the fourth round to make it seem like he ran all four rounds,” said the police officer.
Police suspect that Guntewad ran two rounds wearing both tags to help Pallewad improve his timing and clear the physical endurance test. Both have been booked for cheating and personation under relevant sections of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, said an officer from the Pant Nagar police station.