EXCLUSIVE| How ED Unraveled a Corporate Hijack Behind the Odisha SI Recruitment Paper Leak

Bhubaneswar:  A multi-layered corporate conspiracy, engineered through hidden capital infusions, deliberate regulatory omissions, and an elite state technical empanelment, has been exposed by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED).

What began as a localized police interception of three candidate buses on the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border has transformed into a textbook case of money laundering, corporate proxy manipulation, and systemic public procurement exploitation.

Recent search operations conducted by the ED's Bhubaneswar Zonal Office across 12 premises in Odisha and West Bengal between October 9 and October 12, 2026, have formally unmasked how private mineral trading wealth was weaponized to capture state examination infrastructure. At the center of this expanding web lies an unholy alliance between a state-empanelled tech firm, an unrecorded corporate takeover, and an aggressive push to monetize confidential state recruitment papers.

From Paper Leak to Money Laundering

The structural unraveling of the Sub-Inspector (SI) Recruitment Examination-2024 began on September 30, 2025.

On that morning, Odisha Police intercepted three commercial buses near the border town of Ichhapuram in Andhra Pradesh. Inside were 114 candidates scheduled to sit for the highly competitive SI recruitment exam on October 5 and 6, 2025. Investigative recovery quickly established that these candidates were being transported to isolated safe houses where they were provided leaked question papers in exchange for massive financial payloads ranging between Rs 15 Lakhs and Rs 30 Lakhs per candidate. The syndicates secured these transactions by confiscating the candidates' original academic certificates as collateral.

Recognizing the interstate ramifications and organized nature of the operation, the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which subsequently unpuzzled a long trail of administrative irregularities stretching back to March 2025, when an earlier attempt to hold the same examination was abruptly aborted by the Odisha Police Recruitment Board (OPRB) due to technical compromises. However, as the CBI mapped the operational mechanics of the leak, the ED initiated a parallel financial tracking under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The federal financial agency rapidly shifted the lens from the ground-level conduits to the corporate boardrooms that controlled the digital delivery systems of the state.

Deconstructing STPL’s Hard Data

The prime vendor entrusted with the technical management of the exam papers was Silicon Techlab Private Limited (STPL), a Bhubaneswar-based enterprise incorporated in 2009.

When institutional watchdogs questioned how a local firm bypassed larger conglomerates to secure sensitive state mandates, defensive regulatory reports pointed to STPL’s standalone financial credentials. Forensic accounting and financial data compiled during the investigation reveal a calculated exploitation of the state's procurement framework.

To secure a coveted "Tier-1" standalone empanelment status with the Government of Odisha's Electronics & Information Technology Department, an applicant firm was strictly required to demonstrate a minimum continuous average annual turnover of Rs 8 Crores over the preceding three financial years.

Standalone registry filings show that STPL technically cleared this financial hurdle, posting an operating revenue range fluctuating between Rs 10 Crore and Rs 25 Crore. On paper, the firm appeared fully compliant, presenting a robust technical topline to state evaluation committees.

However, an ED-backed audit of the nature of this revenue exposed a complete structural mismatch.

STPL’s entire historical revenue portfolio was generated from low-security, retail-grade enterprise software systems, including local hospital databases, billing software modules, and secondary school management portals. The firm possessed absolutely zero organic experience, cryptographic capability, or specialized infrastructure required to secure high-security, high-stakes public recruitment testing environments.

More alarmingly, a deep dive into STPL's concurrent financial health uncovered severe internal distress.

Despite maintaining a superficial revenue tier above the Rs 8 Crore baseline, the company’s March 2025 ending financial year’s independent financial statements revealed a massive 40.41% drop in its EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization).

This is BIG: STPL was operationally bleeding out by March 2025, its core software business model was deteriorating, and it lacked the capital reserves to sustain high-tier corporate survival. It was precisely this financial vulnerability that made the company ventured into this recruitment scam.

The Hidden Capital Infusion

The ED’s principal breakthrough occurred when investigators mapped the timeline of STPL’s internal shareholding against its public procurement bids. The agency uncovered a hidden capital infusion that fundamentally altered the company's true ownership long before it ever handled a state exam paper.

On August 5, 2023, the promoters of PSIL International Limited (formerly known as Patnaik Steel International Limited) – a powerful raw material and mineral trading firm led by Managing Director Sameer Kumar Rath and his co-promoter wife, Saswati Mishra – signed a definitive, majority share purchase agreement to acquire controlling management stake in STPL.

Under standard corporate governance mandates governed by Indian law, any structural transformation of shareholding or board control must be formally filed before the Registrar of Companies (RoC) within a strict window.

The ED’s corporate intelligence unit discovered that this critical share purchase agreement was deliberately withheld and never submitted to the RoC by either corporation. This omission was highly strategic. By keeping the transaction entirely off official regulatory channels, the Rath-Mishra family maintained a proxy corporate structure. On public registries, the original founder, Suresh Chandra Nayak, remained the visible, independent head of a standalone local tech firm. Behind the curtain, however, the financial umbilical cord and operational decisions were entirely subservient to the hidden capital injected by the promoters of PSIL.

Investigators are currently auditing whether STPL’s survival in the Tier-1 revenue bracket during this period was organically sustained by software invoicing, or if its balance sheet was artificially buffered by the unrecorded capital flowing from the PSIL mineral trading network to preserve its standalone compliance profile on paper.

Synchronization of the Fraud: The Timeline

The chronological alignment of the conspiracy demonstrates how the proxy corporate layout perfectly timed the state’s administrative windows to embed itself into the recruitment system:

·         August 5, 2023: Sameer Kumar Rath and Saswati Mishra execute the secret share purchase agreement, acquiring majority control and management dominance over STPL while actively hiding the transaction from the RoC.

·         September 26, 2023: Relying on the legacy standalone turnover and corporate profile presented by Suresh Chandra Nayak, the Electronics & IT Department formally awards STPL an elite Tier-1 standalone empanelment status under Notification No. 4023.

·         March 2025: The OPRB attempts to conduct the SI Recruitment Exam via its primary contractor, Central PSU ITI Limited, and a Gujarat-based firm. The attempt collapses due to massive technical irregularities, forcing a postponement and the eventual resignation of the OPRB Chairman.

·         May to July 2025: The OPRB undergoes a leadership reboot. ITI Limited was proposed the newly empanelled Tier-1 standalone firm, STPL, as the local technical execution partner to salvage the exam cycle.

·         August 4, 2025: The Odisha Police Crime Branch completes a surface-level screening of STPL. Bypassed by the hidden RoC status, they issued a clean-chit integrity certificate to Suresh Chandra Nayak.

·         August 5, 2025: Exactly two years to the day after the shadow takeover by PSIL, STPL is officially awarded the state contract to handle the confidential question-paper cycles for the rescheduled SI exam.

·         Late August 2025: Operating without authorization from the real corporate board and acting in tandem with shadow owners, Suresh Chandra Nayak misuses his administrative credentials to unauthorizedly access the secure question-paper vaults.

·         September 2025: STPL secretly sub-leases sensitive candidate data management and technical access to Panchsoft Technologies Private Limited – a firm managed by director Sankar Prusty that was less than two months old and possessed zero technical standing.

·         September 30, 2025: The recruitment syndicate is intercepted at the Ichhapuram border, exposing the massive paper leak hours before the national testing windows were set to open.

·         December 3, 2025: Following primary CBI and ED disclosures, the E&IT Department officially terminates STPL's Tier-1 empanelment, blacklisting the firm for five years.

·         October 9–12, 2026: The ED launches coordinated raids across 12 corporate offices and residential premises in Odisha and West Bengal, seizing incriminating digital ledgers, unrecorded share agreements, and asset deeds linked to the proceeds of crime.

 

The Panchsoft Outsource and the Proceeds of Crime

The financial architecture constructed by the syndicate shows that the paper leak was designed as a high-velocity cash generation machine. Once STPL secured access to the examination material, the proxy operators realized that the company's Tier-1 visibility made direct distribution risky. In response, STPL's leadership, working in connivance with director Sankar Prusty, transferred backend technical candidate access to Panchsoft Technologies.

Sankar Prusty's operatives systematically approached vulnerable candidates, offering guaranteed selection via direct question-paper access in exchange for liquid cash. The ED's financial audit has tracked an intricate matrix of bank transactions flowing between Prusty and STPL that occurred before the formal examination process even commenced, proving that the technical contract was captured with the pre-planned intent to commit fraud.

The ED's current stance is that the generation of the proceeds of crime was highly organized. By charging between Rs15 Lakhs and Rs30 Lakhs per candidate across a network of hundreds of applicants, the syndicate generated tens of crores in illicit cash. This liquid wealth was then systematically routed away from tech accounts and absorbed into the promoters' alternative business portfolios.

The Crime Branch in Tight Corner

The ED's findings have placed intense focus on the structural blind spots within the state's intelligence and procurement machinery. The revelation that the Odisha Police Crime Branch granted a comprehensive security clearance to a hijacked firm just twenty-four hours before it took control of the state's exam papers highlights a critical regulatory vulnerability. By focusing exclusively on superficial criminal registry checks and ignoring financial ownership audits, the state's vetting infrastructure allowed a compromised vendor to step directly into the core of its civil administration systems.

As the ED deepens its forensic examination of the digital devices and incriminating documents seized during the October 2026 raids, the focus has shifted toward identifying all administrative accomplices inside the OPRB and, even, the E&IT evaluation boards who fast-tracked STPL's access. What began as a standard police case against leaking networks has now evolved into a comprehensive federal exposure of an organised corporate plot.

Also Read: Special Analysis| How ED’s Dawn Blitz Will Unravel the Deep-State Police Nexus Behind Odisha’s ₹30-Crore SI Recruitment Scam