LARKANA, March 19: The Anti-Corruption Establishment sleuths on Saturday arrested two lecturers and three officials on charge of getting jobs in government colleges through unfair means in collusion with some officials of the provincial education department.

AEC Larkana circle officer Maqsood Aghani told Dawn that the arrests were made in the wake of an FIR registered in Karachi by the ACE Karachi.

The accused Irfan Aamir Khokar (lecturer), Ihsan Khokhar (office superintendent) and Talib Hussain Sandelo, a senior clerk, were arrested from the Government Degree College Larkana and kept at ACE Larkana police station, he said.

The high-ups had ordered to shift them to Karachi for further investigation, he said.

Shahid Shahani, ACE Qambar-Shahdadkot circle officer, said that he had arrested Abdul Sattar Soomro (lecturer) from the Government Degree College Nasirabad on a similar charge and handed him over to ACE Larkana. He too was arrested under the same FIR registered in Karachi.

Sindh Anti-Corruption Chairman Mohammad Ramzan Channa said that the arrested lecturers and officials had got fake appointments with the help of some low ranking staff of the education department.

These lecturers, he said, had not appeared in examinations conducted by the Sindh Public Service Commission but used their connections in the education department to insert their names in the final lists and issue them appointment orders.

“We have lodged an FIR in Karachi against them after a detailed inquiry,” he said, adding that the number of such fake appointments was around 20.

“We are after them and the ACE offices in the province have been asked to arrest them so as to make them feel we are not sleeping,” he said.

The deputy director of ACE Larkana Altaf Hussain Leghari said that the secretariat staff in the education department had inserted fake names in the original list of candidates recommended by the SPSC.

The chief minister took notice of the fraud, an inquiry followed and a case was lodged in Karachi against them after seeking approval from the chief secretary, he said. The case has been filed under sections 161, 162, 165-A, 166, 167, 217, 218, 201, 420, 465, 468, 471 and 34 PPC.

He said that Irfan Aamir Khokhar had been dismissed as lecturer of political science but he continued to work and draw salary while Abdul Sattar Soomro was a lecturer of Sindhi in the Government Degree College Nasirabad.

He said that all the people involved in the case would be arrested and tried by a special court of anti-corruption in Karachi.