According to officials, against 24 vacancies, there were 78 candidates in the provisional list issued in July 2025; the 24 included one vacancy under the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. (Express Photo)In an unusual case, a mining engineer from Rajasthan employed Artificial Intelligence (AI) to hack into the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) portal and ‘delete’ his competition in a government recruitment, quite literally.According to the Ajmer Police, 27-year-old Rahul Kumar Meeena removed the names of three competitors from the provisional list of Assistant Mining Engineer examination, 2024, in order to improve his chances.Shamsher Khan, Deputy SP, Cyber police station, Ajmer, said that a complaint was received from RPSC Deputy Director and analyst-programmer Raghuveer Gurjar regarding tampering with the RPSC recruitment portal in the 2024 exam.According to officials, against 24 vacancies, there were 78 candidates in the provisional list issued in July 2025; the 24 included one vacancy under the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. Here, six ST candidates had made it to the provisional list against that one vacancy.To improve his chances, Rahul Meena, who was second on this ST list, withdrew the application of Ashish Meena, the first candidate just above him in the merit list. However, worried about raising suspicion, he withdrew two more names on the list, the 4th and 6th candidates.Also Read | UPSC opens applications for 194 vacancies across 32 posts in central government departments till June 12 at upsc.gov.inKhan said that an SMS went to all the three candidates that their application has been withdrawn as per their request. “One of them, Ravi, then approached RPSC questioning how his application had been withdrawn when he did not do so, and RSCP subsequently informed the Department of Information Technology and Communication (DoIT&C), which handles the RPSC recruitment portal,” he said.At the time the applications were withdrawn, the option to withdraw them was closed, officials say. Investigation revealed that the same Single Sign-On (SSO) ID was employed to withdraw all three applications; SSO is a unique Digital Identity issued by the Rajasthan government to every registered citizen, business, and government employee.Story continues below this adThis SSO ID, allegedly a fake, was created in the name of one Rahul Sinha. Investigators found that the same IP address was used by applicant Rahul Meena to create his login credentials as well.Further investigation revealed the IP address to be from the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) compound in Jharkhand. “During investigation we found that Rahul Meena had been working in SAIL, Jharkhand, since 2019; this was the same place from where the applications were withdrawn,” DSP Khan said.Once it was confirmed that Rahul is the person they’ve been looking for, investigators went looking for him in his hometown Dausa. To nab Meena, a police constable then called up his brother pretending to be from a courier service, telling him that the courier will be returned unless Rahul’s exact address is shared. Once the police had Rahul’s address, a team went and caught him.“During questioning, Rahul said that he has completed his BTech in Mining Engineering from Banaras Hindu University and has been working with SAIL in Jharkhand since 2019. He said that in his free time, he had a hobby of crawling sites on ‘inspection mode’,” the DSP said. Rahul allegedly employed AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Grok, Deepseek, etc. to try and change the coding of websites. For RPSC too, he employed a similar method through AI chatbots to bypass the security measures and mask himself through VPN – but left behind enough trails – while withdrawing the three applications in December 2025; DOIT&C has since plugged the security gaps, officials say.Story continues below this ad“Rahul was looking to get married and settle in Rajasthan after spending so many years in Jharkhand,” the DSP said, “He was mistaken to think that he would come up to the first position after the first merit candidate was removed.”Rahul has been sent to police custody till June 25 and his devices, including mobile and laptops, have been seized and will be analysed by the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) team. As for the vacancy, it was eventually secured by the number one candidate whose application was withdrawn by Rahul: Ashish Meena.Hamza Khan is a seasoned Correspondent for The Indian Express, specifically reporting from the diverse and politically dynamic state of Rajasthan. Based in Jaipur, he provides high-authority coverage on the state's governance, legal landscape, and social issues, directly supporting the "Journalism of Courage" ethos of the publication. Expertise Politics & Governance: Comprehensive tracking of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly, including policy changes (e.g., the Right to Health Bill and Anti-Mob Lynching Bills), bypoll dynamics, and the shifting power structures between the BJP and Congress. ... Read More Tags:artificial intelligenceexam