Jaipur: Barely 24 hours after the Rajasthan High Court scrapped the 2021 SI recruitment exam, the special operations group (SOG) caught one of its most wanted fugitives — a 42-year-old accused who was on the run for years in multiple paper leak rackets.SOG ADG VK Singh said that the accused, identified as Vinod Kumar Rewad, a native of Doongri Kala under Renwal police station in Jaipur district, carried a Rs 50,000 reward on his head. He is wanted in the SI paper leak; the senior teacher grade-II paper leak, which was busted in Udaipur’s Bekariya in 2022; and the school lecturer paper leak cases. Courts had already issued a warrant against him under Section 37 of the Police Act.SOG DIG Paris Deshmukh said Rewad was absconding for months, moving across states while investigators tightened the net. On Friday, acting on human and technical intelligence, SOG teams tracked him down to Daspalla, a small town in Odisha’s Nayagarh district, 1,600km away from Jaipur.“He is a major kingpin, a close aide of numerous mafia figures such as Bhupendra Saran, Jagdish Bishnoi, Anil Kumar,” Deshmukh said, adding that the accused owned a coaching centre and a school in Renwal.He was into refuelling vehicles for a railway bridge contractor, and kept his identity under wraps in the small town. But his cover was blown when a team led by Deshmukh and additional SP Hariprasad Somani swooped in and nabbed him.For the SOG, the arrest marks another key link in the exam paper leak chain that has plagued the state’s recruitment system. “The accused was presented before the court which remanded him to police custody till Sept 4. His custody is expected to give fresh leads on how paper mafia networks spread across districts function,” said an officer.
