Mumbai, Jan 2 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation has busted a railway recruitment scam, involving some senior officials and politicians, an agency official said here Monday.

Describing the developments as “the tip of the iceberg”, the CBI has nabbed Rammani Tripathi, a senior technician of Central Railway (CR), who is also a trade unionist, and a Nationalist Congress Party activist Balaji Shelke Patil, in the scam.

Both the accused have been remanded to CBI custody till Jan 13 even as investigations are underway to uncover the full ramifications of the case, said the official, who did not want to be named.

The investigations were initiated following two complaints against Tripathi who had allegedly demanded Rs.500,000 for “arranging” jobs as CR ticket collectors through the VIP quota and the influence of senior railway officials and politicians in New Delhi.

The CBI Sunday arrested Tripathi while accepting an amount of Rs.400,000 as the first instalment from both the complainants.

During his interrogation, Tripathi revealed the name of Patil, an activist of NCP who allegedly acted as a conduit for arranging jobs in the railways. He said that Patil had demanded the money for getting the recruitments done.

Accordingly, the CBI trapped Patil while he was accepting the money from Tripathi.

According to CBI, Patil is allegedly having links with some politician in New Delhi through whom he has tie-ups for arranging railway amounts in return for heavy bribes.

Besides, the duo have spilled beans on touts operating at the railway ministry who promise to organise railway jobs at a price.

“The case is only the tip of an iceberg of a recruitment scam in CR where innocent jobless youth are lured of a job in railways against payment of huge bribes,” the CBI official said.

Further investigations are underway even as the CBI has appealed to people to report such instances involving any government department.