Illustration with the word 'NEET'. For representational purposes.
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Ahmedabad: The CBI probe into Godhra NEET (UG) examination scam has revealed that the accused persons took the two examination centres in their "complete control including all supervisory staff, invigilators, among others to manipulate the OMR answer sheet of candidates in lieu of huge sums of money."
The central probe agency, which filed its first chargesheet against five suspects recently, has identified at least 30 students who chose their centres in two schools at Godhra as part of the criminal conspiracy. The students included three from Bihar, six from Godhra, eight from different districts of Gujarat, four from Maharashtra, five from Odisha, three from Rajasthan and one from Uttar Pradesh.
"These candidates were made to fill out/change their application forms with present addresses in Panchmahal/Vadodara, select Godhra as their exam centre, and choose Gujarati as their medium of examination. The candidates were assured that correct answers would be filled in their OMR sheets by the accused persons after examination, ensuring good marks and a chance to study MBBS in India or abroad. They thus conspired to manipulate the examination system and cheated NTA and the students at large who had appeared in the examination for personal gain and undue benefit to the candidates," CBI has claimed in the chargesheet, a copy of which DH accessed.
The chargesheet has been filed against Purshottam Sharma, Tushar Bhatt, Parshuram Roy, Arif Noor Mohammed Vorah and Umeshwar Prasad Singh Anand. The CBI is likely to file a supplementary chargesheet on the role of Dixit Patel, the chairman of Jay Jalaram Trust, which runs the schools. All the accused, including Patel, are under judicial custody.
The agency has said that the "main reason" behind persuading the candidates to choose Godhra as their centres was the fact that these centres "were under complete control of the accused including their supervisory staff, invigilators." The chargesheet states that the rooms designated for counting the OMR sheets at both schools "were not subjected to live video surveillance. It was the responsibility of the City Coordinator to ensure that all rooms were equipped with CCTV surveillance."
Sharma was the principal of Jay Jalaram School, Padvadi in Godhra. He was appointed by NTA (National Testing Agency) as the City Coordinator for the Godhra Centre. He, in turn, appointed co-accused Tushar Bhatt as Deputy Centre Superintendent despite the latter not being an employee of the school but was shown to NTA as "supervisor."
NTA had sent Sharma a list of six schools to choose as centres for 2,515 candidates. Out of these, he finalised Jay Jalaram School in Godhra and Jay Jalaram International School, Padal in Kheda district. They are 40 kms apart and were shown as falling in Godhra, Panchmahal district.
The CBI has said that the both the accused "ensured that they would have access and control on the exam centres." They conspired with Parashuram Roy who runs Roy Overseas, a consultancy for guiding candidates to take up higher education including MBBS in India and abroad. Co-accused Anand was working with Roy for contacting the candidates on behalf of Roy Overseas. Arif Vorah allegedly served as liaison between Tushar Bhatt and parents of the candidates "to solicit payments from them in exchange for orchestrating favourale outcomes for their children in NEET examination."
The investigation has also revealed that the accused influenced the parents of the candidates to hand over their original marksheets as security and asked them to pay an advance to ensure higher marks. The test was conducted on May 5, when over 23 lakh candidates appeared across the country. The conspiracy of the suspects was foiled in the nick of time following a tip off received by Panchmahal district collector.
The case was initially probed by Godhra police and was later handed over to CBI, which was investigating a similar offence registered in Bihar. The local police had arrested the five accused persons, against whom chargesheet has been filed, and recovered cash and blank cheques amounting to Rs 2.3 crore given by the parents of the students.