Prime Accused Abdus Salam Arrested over Fake Recruitment by Cloning Kurigram Agricultural University Website

Special Response Battalion-13 (SRB-13) has arrested Abdus Salam (44), the prime accused in a case of defrauding job seekers by publishing a fake recruitment notice after cloning the website of Kurigram Agricultural University.

He was arrested early on Thursday (29 October) in a raid on a rented house in the Shantidhara area of Ideal Mor in Rangpur city.

Abdus Salam is the son of the late Abdul Hamid of Bara Majidpur (Madhya Para) village in Pirganj upazila of Rangpur. SRB-13 said he is a former superintendent of a madrasa.

In a press release sent on Thursday, SRB-13 said a fraud ring led by Abdus Salam cloned the university's website and published a fake notice for recruiting officers and employees to various posts. Job seekers applied after seeing the notice.

Later, a community centre in Rangpur was rented to hold a fake recruitment test with an estimated 100 candidates. Candidates were then given viva examinations in Rajshahi, the release said.

At one stage, on 3 December 2024, a fake office order was published stating that 42 people had been finally appointed to various posts. The ring allegedly took a large amount of money by promising jobs in this way.

When the matter came to the university authorities' attention, a general diary (GD) was filed at Kurigram Sadar Police Station to take steps to shut down the cloned website.

One of the defrauded job seekers, Farhadul Islam Mondal (29) of Palunashahapur village in Pirganj upazila of Rangpur, filed a case at Pirganj Police Station on 27 October as plaintiff. Abdus Salam was made the prime accused in the case.

SRB-13 said that, acting on secret information, a raid was conducted at around 4am on Thursday on the second floor of a rented house in the Shantidhara area of Ideal Mor under Kotwali Police Station in Rangpur city. Alongside the arrest, a laptop used in the fraud, blank pages of cheque books of various banks given by job seekers, and various job-related papers were seized.

Abdus Salam also faces earlier fraud allegations. He is accused of taking money from various women in the name of insurance while serving as superintendent of a madrasa in Sadullapur, Gaibandha. He is also accused of embezzling money from several families in different areas of Sundarganj by promising to install tube wells.

Biplob Kumar Goswami, additional superintendent of police of Rangpur SRB-13, said intelligence surveillance continues to identify and arrest others involved in the fraud. The arrested accused and the seized evidence have been handed over to the concerned police station, he said.