Hyderabad:
Eleven more people, including three brokers and eight candidates, were arrested on Tuesday for their alleged role in irregularities in PG Medical Entrance Test conducted by Vijayawada-based Dr NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS), police said.
With today's arrests, the CID has so far arrested a total of 41 people, including 18 brokers and 23 students involved in the "scam", as a probe into "irregularities" in the entrance test had established leakage of question papers.
The CID arrested 11 more culprits, who were allegedly also responsible for leak the printed question paper circulated to candidates and tutored them in various places, including Mumbai, Goa, Hyderabad and Bangalore, CID officials said.
As the CID probe revealed that the question paper was leaked from Manipal Printing Technologies Ltd in Manipal, the involvement of the press management and higher NTRUHS authorities continues to be under probe, they said, adding that during the investigation, the CID found that a lot of irregularities and procedural lapses were committed by university officials.
According to CID officials, one Ameer Ahmed of Davangere, who was earlier involved in a similar case in Bangalore along with one Rajagopal Reddy of Bangalore hatched a plan to get question papers being printed at Manipal Technologies Ltd, since most of the question papers of important entrance exams are printed here.
He had tried to join the press, but failed to do so.
Later, he allegedly inducted his associate, one Praveen, into the press as a casual labourer through one Shalimar Agencies in November 2013, after which they managed to get the PGMET-2014 question paper on February 18.
As per Ahmed's plan, Praveen stole the question paper from the printing press, by concealing it in his undergarments, CID officials said, adding that both Ahmed and Praveen were among the brokers already arrested.
Earlier, the CID had submitted a report to Andhra Pradesh Governor ESL Narasimhan about its findings.
On April 2, the AP governor cancelled the scam-ridden PG medical entrance test conducted by NTRUHS on March 2.
Around 15,000 students had appeared for examinations held on March 2 for 2,240 odd medical seats.
However, hundreds of students had complained that some candidates had secured top ranks though they had failed in some subjects during graduation and some others had performed poorly in PG entrance exams in other states.