BREAKING | ED Busts KPSC Veterinary Officers’ Exam Racket: IAS Officer, Middleman Arrested Under PMLA Over Alleged ₹30–40 Lakh Question-Paper Leak

Bengaluru, September 30, 2026

A resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru. A leaked question paper with answers already filled in. Candidates memorising those answers under supervision the night before the examination. Vehicles arranged to transport them to their exam centres the following morning. And at the top of the chain an Indian Administrative Service officer who, while holding the most sacred position of custodial trust in Karnataka’s public examination infrastructure, allegedly sold that trust for illegal gratification.

(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)

The Enforcement Directorate’s Bengaluru Zonal Office has blown open one of the most meticulously orchestrated examination fraud schemes uncovered in Karnataka in recent years arresting both the alleged middleman and the IAS officer at the heart of the conspiracy, securing fourteen days of ED custody for each, and placing before a Special PMLA Court a money laundering case whose financial anatomy blank signed cheques, promissory notes, cash and banking channels, gold jewellery purchases, and a cooperative society’s bank account used as a conduit reveals the chilling professionalism with which the proceeds of educational corruption were generated, layered, and projected as untainted property.

The Examination: 400 Veterinary Officer Posts and a Compromised Selection Process

The Enforcement Directorate’s investigation is anchored in a set of multiple FIRs registered at the Vidhana Soudha Police Station, Bengaluru, for offences punishable under Sections 318(3), 318(4), 336(2), 336(3), and 340(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 the scheduled offences that form the predicate criminal activity for the money laundering charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

The examination at the centre of the scandal is the Veterinary Officers’ Recruitment Examination conducted by the Karnataka Public Service Commission for 400 posts a competitive recruitment process whose integrity was entrusted to the institutional machinery of one of India’s most constitutionally significant statutory bodies, and whose outcome was intended to determine, purely on merit, which candidates would serve the State of Karnataka as veterinary officers in the public service.

The integrity of that process was allegedly compromised from within by the very officer whose statutory duty was to protect it.

The Accused No. 1: Basavaraj Kannale the Middleman Who Ran the Operation

Basavaraj Kannale is the alleged operational architect of the examination fraud the man who, according to the ED’s investigation, translated the possession of the leaked question paper into a commercial enterprise of considerable scale and sophistication.

The investigative picture that has emerged is damning in its specificity. Kannale allegedly obtained access to the leaked question paper complete with correct answers through his close association with the then Controller of Examinations of the KPSC.

Armed with that paper, he identified and approached multiple candidates’ aspirin veterinary officers who had already invested years of academic preparation in qualifying for the examination and offered them something no amount of legitimate preparation could provide: certainty of selection.

The price of that certainty was initially fixed at ₹80 lakh per candidate. In a negotiation whose commercial character reflects the operation’s businesslike organisation, amounts were eventually settled in the range of ₹30 lakh to ₹40 lakh per candidate a reduction that made the arrangement accessible to a larger pool of buyers without materially diminishing the total criminal proceeds generated across the full cohort of beneficiaries.

Portions of the agreed amounts were collected as advance through both cash and banking channels a hybrid approach that distributed the financial trail across instruments of varying detectability.

For the balance amounts, candidates were required to furnish blank signed cheques and promissory notes documents that placed the buyer in a position of permanent financial vulnerability to the seller, ensuring compliance and silencing any inclination to report the arrangement to authorities.

The Resort Operation: Educational Fraud Conducted with the Precision of a Military Exercise

The most viscerally disturbing element of the ED’s investigation and the one that most clearly illustrates the planned, professional character of the alleged fraud is the account of what happened the night before the examination.

Selected candidates were transported to a resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

There, in what was effectively an overnight examination preparation camp, they were provided with the leaked question paper containing the correct answers and made to memorise those answers under the direct supervision of Basavaraj Kannale and his associates.

The following morning the date of the scheduled examination the candidates were transported from the resort to their respective examination centres in vehicles arranged by Kannale and his associates.

The choreography of this operation the selection of a resort outside the city for operational security, the overnight memorisation session, the supervised transport to examination venues reflects the level of planning and coordination that distinguishes an organised criminal enterprise from an opportunistic individual fraud.

This was not a candidate who stumbled upon a leaked paper the night before an examination. This was a structured commercial operation, replicated across multiple candidates, whose logistics were planned and executed with the specificity of a managed professional service.

The Accused No. 2: Gyanendra Kumar Gangwar, IAS The Institutional Insider Who Made It All Possible

The money laundering investigation’s most significant target is not the middleman it is the source. And the source, according to the ED, is Gyanendra Kumar Gangwar, an Indian Administrative Service officer who, at the material time, held the position of Controller of Examinations at the Karnataka Public Service Commission.

The statutory responsibilities that attach to that position are unambiguous and constitutionally significant.

The Controller of Examinations is entrusted with the finalisation and supervision of question paper printing, the maintenance of custody of confidential examination material, and the overall assurance of the transparent and fair conduct of recruitment examinations.

The candidates who appeared for the Veterinary Officers’ Recruitment Examination and the citizens of Karnataka whose state service is populated through these examinations placed their trust in the institutional integrity of that position.

The ED’s investigation has found that Gangwar allegedly misused his official position to facilitate the leakage of the examination’s question paper complete with correct answers to Basavaraj Kannale, one day prior to the scheduled examination, in exchange for illegal gratification.

The alleged conduct is a violation not merely of the criminal law provisions under which the predicate FIRs were registered.

It is a betrayal of the constitutional trust that attaches to a public office whose entire purpose is the protection of the meritocratic integrity of state recruitment processes.

An IAS officer who converts his custody of a question paper into a commercial transaction has not merely committed an offence under the penal code he has attacked the foundational premise upon which every honest aspirant participates in a public examination.

The Arrests: Production Warrants, Special PMLA Courts, and Fourteen Days of ED Custody

The chronology of the arrests reflects the precision with which the ED has moved on the basis of its investigation.

Basavaraj Kannale was formally arrested on September 17, 2026 at a time when he was already in judicial custody in connection with the predicate offences pursuant to the reasons to believe recorded under Section 19 of the PMLA, 2002, for his role in the generation, collection, and handling of proceeds of crime.

He was produced before the Special Court for PMLA Cases (CCH-4) on September 29, 2026, which granted fourteen days of ED custody for further investigation.

Gyanendra Kumar Gangwar, IAS, was formally arrested on September 18, 2026 also while in judicial custody for his role in facilitating the generation of proceeds of crime arising from the scheduled criminal activity.

He was produced before the Special Court on September 21, 2026, on the strength of a Production Warrant, and the court granted fourteen days of ED custody for further investigation.

The Special Court’s grant of fourteen days of ED custody in each case is a significant procedural development one that authorises the Directorate to conduct detailed custodial interrogation, confront each accused with the other’s disclosures, trace the movement of criminal proceeds through the financial network, and identify any additional accused whose role in the scheme has not yet been formally