Techie exploits lapses in security, uses AI to purge govt job competitors — Here's what happened next

Techie exploited security lapses in government job portal, used AI to purge competitors and mask himself with VPN. Let's find out what happened next.A techie fraudulently deleted applications of fellow competitors from a Rajasthan public service job list to improve his recruitment chances.(pixabay)A techie from Rajasthan is in the limelight for using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to eliminate his government job competitors. After identifying security lapses in government job portal, the mining engineer deployed AI chatbots to mask himself through VPN and deleted names of fellow competitors from the merit list of Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC), Indian Express reported.The accused, identified as 27-year-old Rahul Kumar Meeena, had appeared for a state level recruitment exam in which he secured second rank under the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. To improve his chances of securing employment, he withdrew the application of the first candidate Ashish Meena, who was just above him in the provisional list of Assistant Mining Engineer examination, 2024. To avoid detection, he eliminated two more names from the list of candidates who secured 4th and 5th position.All the candidates whose application was deleted by Rahul Kumar Meeena received an SMS informing that their application has been withdrawn as per their request.It is important to note that the ST list comprised 6 candidates against once vacancy. This recruitment drive was conducted for total of 24 vacancies, including one for ST category. The provisional list published in July 2025, listed as many as 78 candidates including Rahul Kumar Meeena.How did techie's sly scheme surface?When Ravi one of the candidate whose application was received a message stating that his application has been withdrawn as per his request, he approached the police. Alarmed with this message, Ravi approached the RPSC to inquire why his application was withdrawn when he did not make any such request.The SMS update pointed to something concerning as the window to withdraw applications had closed long before. RPSC Deputy Director and analyst-programmer Raghuveer Gurjar filed a complaint in the matter regarding tampering with the RPSC recruitment portal in the 2024 exam, Ajmer's Deputy SP (Cyber police station) Shamsher Khan said. "RSCP subsequently informed the Department of Information Technology and Communication (DoIT&C), which handles the RPSC recruitment portal,” the publication quoted Shamsher Khan as saying.Probe revealed that Rahul Sinha created a fake Single Sign-On (SSO) ID to withdraw all three applications. Notably, SSO is a unique Digital Identity issued by the Rajasthan government to every registered citizen, business and government employee. Investigators were able to trace the accused with the help of IP address, which was the same Rahul Meena used to create his login credentials.Subsequently, the investigators traced IP address location which was found to be from the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) compound in Jharkhand. DSP Khan added, “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."Rahul had secured a BTech in Mining Engineering degree from Banaras Hindu University and had been working with SAIL in Jharkhand since 2019. Rahul had a habit of crawling sites on ‘inspection mode’ during his free time and allegedly tried to change the coding of websites using AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Grok and Deepseek, among others.However, while circumventing security gaps of RPSC portal, he left behind enough trails and was ultimately arrested. All his devices, including mobile and laptops, were seized and were sent to Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) team for analysis. While Rahul was remanded to police custody till 25 June, the ST vacancy was eventually secured by the number one candidate Ashish Meena.Stay updated with the latest Trending, India , World and US news.