Date:26/05/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/05/26/stories/2005052618990300.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Impersonation racket busted

Staff Reporter

Accused made `brilliant' students write COMED-K test on the applicants' behalf

BANGALORE: The Central Crime Branch (CCB) officials have arrested two persons who had allegedly taken lakhs of rupees and arranged for impostors to write the entrance test to professional colleges conducted by the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K) on May 1 on behalf of some applicants.

On a tip-off, the police raided a flat in a posh apartment complex on Lavelle Road here and arrested Sanjeev Singh alias Sanju (26) and Jayashankar Kumar (22). The police seized from them some answer scripts of the under graduate entrance test (UGET)-2005 conducted by COMED-K, fake rubber stamps and other documents.

The police said three others who were part of the racket, Rajeev Singh, Rajagopal Reddy and Raj Gupta, are at large.

After the State Government limited the Common Entrance Test (CET) for engineering, medical and dental courses to Karnataka students, there was a huge demand for admissions to these courses in private colleges through the UGET-2005.

The accused allegedly took lakhs of rupees from north Indian students who had applied for the UGET-2005. They made some "brilliant" students to write the test on their behalf, the police said. The accused had forged the entrance tickets and affixed "smudged" photographs to them, the police said. The police suspect around 100 students had impersonated for the original candidates.

During the UGET-2005, the COMED-K officials detected 20 cases of impersonation, most of them in Gulbarga and two in Bangalore. Sixteen candidates were debarred.

An alert was issued to COMED-K squads to check on 50 other candidates. Four of the impostors had run away while the checking was on. Confessional statements were obtained from those who were caught.

A case was registered in the Shankarapuram police station. COMED-K had received 20,890 applications till April 23, the last day for submitting them. But an unusual number of applicants from Jharkhand had opted for Gulbarga as their test centre.

In one case, two candidates, Ajay Kumar Singh and Krishna Kumar Sharma of Jamshedpur, had affixed identical photographs, both smudged.

While Singh's date of birth was mentioned as July 1, 1986, Sharma's was shown as October 20, 1980. The two had given the same address in their applications.