CID searches suspended KPSC chairman Sahukar’s residence

CID sleuths launched searches at the Bengaluru residence of suspended Karnataka Public Service Commission chairman Shivashankarappa S Sahukar in connection with alleged recruitment irregularities, police sources said on Tuesday. The searches at his residence in Dollars Colony along with his relatives' premises were carried out, they said. The searches that began on Monday were continuing, they added.
Meanwhile, the CID presented its  findings in the Karnataka High Court on Monday by the public prosecutor during the hearing of an anticipatory bail plea filed by the suspended KPSC chairman. It said that the suspended Chairman and his son were in frequent contact through encrypted internet calls with a middleman arrested for facilitating leaks of the exam paper. Shivashankarappa is suspected to have connived with the controller of exams at the KPSC, Gyanendra Kumar, an IAS officer, and an arrested middleman, Basavaraj Kannale, a BJP-linked businessman, to leak the KPSC exam papers to select candidates who had paid up to Rs 80 lakh to be selected as veterinarians, the investigation has found.
The CID investigation through the Internet Protocol Detail Records of internet calls involving the suspended chairman, the controller of exams, and the middleman showed them to be in frequent contact, especially on the days on which the entrance exams were conducted by the KPSC. “He and his son were in touch with two candidates. The chairman and his family members were in touch with Basavaraj Kannale, the middleman who has been arrested,” Public Prosecutor B N Jagadeesha told the court.The court was also informed that “there was consistent and ongoing communication and contact” between Shivashankarrappa and Gyanendra Kumar “during the entire period when the Veterinary Officers examination was being conducted”.
The CID inquiry has revealed that the candidates who received the leaked question papers were trained at resorts and hotels to answer the questions a day before the exams. The middlemen then took them to the examination centres. The CID inquiry has found that the middlemen led by Kannale approached candidates and took payments in cash and bank transfers and that question papers were provided to the candidates in both handwritten and printed formats prior to the exams.
Twenty-nine candidates among a total of 328 who took the entrance exam on January 8 and 9, 2026, are alleged to have been selected fraudulently by the KPSC, according to an FIR registered by the Bengaluru police earlier this year based on a complaint filed by a veterinary doctor Manjunath, who did not get selected.

(State Correspondent)