Rejecting allegations of a “recruitment scam”, mass copying and paper leakage, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has refused to quash the selection process for 184 posts of Senior Assistant-cum-Inspector conducted after holding that “mere suspicion or a post-result dissatisfaction of unsuccessful candidates cannot be elevated to the status of proof.” The advertisement for the purpose was issued in 2023.The allegations had earlier prompted a detailed fact-finding inquiry by a retired judge of the High Court, whose report dated June 24, 2025, was placed before the court. Endorsing the findings, Justice Brar observed the inquiry provided a “methodical and exhaustive rebuttal to each allegation raised by the petitioners.”Justice Harpreet Singh Brar observed the petitioners’ entire case was resting upon alleged “similarities in answer patterns and geographical concentration of successful candidates.” The inquiry officer conducted a detailed district-wise, roll number-wise and centre-wise analysis of the top 50 candidates following the allegations of regional concentration.It was found that 45 candidates were from eight districts of Punjab and five from three districts of Haryana. They appeared at different centres with no clustering in seating or roll numbers. The report concluded that “geographical concentration alone, without evidence of collusion or malpractice, cannot be a ground to vitiate the selection process.”Addressing age-related allegations, the inquiry found that only two candidates among the top 50 were above 40 and protected by statutory age relaxation. The report added that “merit in a competitive examination is age-neutral and any presumption otherwise would be violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.”Referring to the report, Justice Brar asserted that the extreme step to cancel a recruitment process could be taken if there was “evidence of a systemic taint that goes to the very root of the selection, rendering it impossible to separate the tainted from the untainted.” In the present case, the court found that “the petitioners have provided only conjectures and surmises which do not meet the heavy legal onus required for judicial interference.”On claims of favouritism following family connections, the inquiry noted that only two candidates among the top 50 belonged to the same family and both had verifiable academic credentials. It recorded that “there is no legal prohibition against relatives appearing in the same examination or qualifying it,” and that “mere existence of a filial relationship alone cannot raise an inference of favouritism in absence of any evidence to that effect.”The allegation of identical wrong answers was also rejected after forensic examination of original OMR sheets. The forensic expert, the report noted, “categorically ruled out common authorship of any two OMR sheets and found no evidence of impersonation or mass fabrication.”“The petitioners have failed to place sufficient, cogent, or verifiable material on the record to substantiate the grave allegations of systemic fraud, paper leakage, or mass copying,” Justice Brar asserted.