The Flying Squad of the District Agriculture Department has uncovered a massive employment racket operating under the banner of a fake “Krishi Mitra” recruitment drive. Acting on specific grievances and tracking unauthorized social media advertisements, regulatory authorities raided an ongoing examination center hosted at a local college. The enforcement action revealed a deeply coordinated scheme designed to extract registration fees from job seekers while illegally distributing unlicensed agricultural bioproducts under the simulated authority of the Maharashtra state government.
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Deceptive Job Advertisements and Examination Disruptions
The multi-district employment scam gained traction across digital platforms and closed WhatsApp networks through highly professional-looking advertisements promising fixed government positions. The fraudulent listings guaranteed a monthly stipend of ₹25,000 for selecting candidates to serve as rural “Krishi Mitra” (Agriculture Friends) coordinators. Attracted by the secure government employment profile, over 350 unemployed youths from various pockets of Jalgaon district registered and arrived at the designated college campus to take the mandatory screening examination.
The operational setup rapidly collapsed into chaotic protests after candidates were denied official hall tickets upon arrival. Representatives of the organizing private agency, which originates from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, abruptly shifted their parameters, informing the gathered students that the promised fixed salary was completely false. Instead, candidates were told they would operate on a strict commission-based framework driven entirely by the retail sales volume of corporate agricultural inputs. Outraged by the bait-and-switch tactic, the candidates refused to take the test, surrounded the coordinators, and demanded immediate fee reversals, prompting an emergency deployment by the Zilla Peth police unit to maintain local order.
Unauthorized Bio-Product Seizures and Lack of Permits
As the police secured the parameter, the Agriculture Department’s specialized flying squad initiated a comprehensive physical audit of the testing environment. Investigators discovered that 111 candidates were actively writing the paper inside the hall, with each applicant having already routed a ₹250 online processing fee to the agency’s accounts. A parallel inspection of the logistical materials brought to the site by the private firm led to the immediate seizure of 273 packets of unlicensed agricultural bio-products branded as “Crop Booster.”
Agricultural enforcement officers established that the coordinators were actively distributing these bio-products to the candidates without holding the mandatory commercial sales licenses, principal certificates, or legal billing records required under federal statutes. Authorities have initiated chemical analysis protocols on the seized packets to identify the exact elemental compositions, noting that distributing input stocks under the guise of an educational recruitment test constitutes a severe violation of the Fertilizer Control Order and the Essential Commodities Act.
State-Wide Verification Grids and Criminal Bookings
District agriculture officials confirmed that the name and official symbols of the Maharashtra Government were intentionally weaponized by the private entity to deceive rural communities. Police teams have taken the primary regional coordinator into custody for intense questioning to map out the secondary administrative actors managing the parent organization. Investigators have confirmed that parallel complaints regarding this exact “Krishi Mitra” examination module have simultaneously surfaced across five other districts in the state, pointing toward a centralized interstate employment ring.
The state administration has issued a high-priority warning to agrarian communities and rural students, reiterating that the Department of Agriculture does not recognize any “Krishi Mitra” recruitment pipeline and handles all public openings exclusively through its official web portals. Victims are being actively encouraged to submit individual transaction logs to fast-track multi-level cheating and forgery cases against the directors of the private institute.
