Three arrested for cheating Karnataka medical seat aspirants

Mangalore Today News Network

Bangalore, Aug 02, 2014:  The Bangalore city police have arrested three persons who cheated medical seat aspirants by promising them seats in prestigious colleges in the state.

The police identified the three arrested persons as Saketh Kumar, Goutham and Deepak Jha. The trio who hail from Bihar are settled in Bangalore. They cheated people looking for medical seats in Karnataka. A preliminary investigation has revealed that Jha collected more than Rs 45 lakh from a candidate.

The JP Nagar police, who registered a case, have recovered Rs 16 lakh from the trio. Police sources said that further investigations were on to probe whether the trio are also linked to the kingpins of a larger impersonation scam in the COMED-K entrance test for private medical and dental colleges in Karnataka that has been unearthed over the last two academic years.

The latest cheating scam involving medical seats came to light soon after the Central Crime Branch police booked more than 45 persons including nine middlemen in connection with an impersonation scam in the COMED-K medical entrance examination.

According to the police following the unravelling of the scam nearly 50 persons approached the city police and complained that they had received messages with offers of medical seats at various prominent colleges but were cheated. The police filed 21 FIRs across the city to carry out investigations in these cases.

“The CCB police are coordinating with the local police to find the middlemen who offered seats for cash to the parents of medical seat aspirants. We have questioned many of them to verify whether they had links with the COMED-K medical entrance test scam,” a CCB police officer said.

The CCB police had served notices to nine colleges to provide details of seats available with them. Only a few colleges had failed to respond and the city police had served fresh notices directing them to co-operate in the investigation, CCB sources said.

“We are verifying the seats surrendered by students in suspect colleges. We are investigating as to why the students surrendered the seats whether there was a genuine reason or whether these seats were part of the larger scam. We can come to a conclusion about the selling of seats by colleges only after scrutinizing the documents from the colleges,” an officer said.