Chennai/Theni: The special investigation team, probing the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) impersonation case, has unearthed more startling revelations.
The father of a Tamil Nadu student, who was caught from Salem in connection with the case, has turned out to be a quack.
Mohammed Shafi, the father of first-year medical student Muhammed Irfan of Dharmapuri Medical College, was found to be a fake doctor by the probe team. He had been running a clinic at Tirupattur in Vaniyambadi of Tamil Nadu for several years. Shafi, who joined a private medical college in Tamil Nadu in 1990, had stopped his studies after three years. Then he managed to procure a fake certificate and started a clinic.
“He even got some of his friends, who were doctors, to come to the clinic and examine the patients," CB-CID SP Vijayakumar said. He has been remanded for 15 days by the Theni court.
The CB-CID would move the court, seeking the custody of Shafu's son Irfan, for questioning. Irfan who had left for Mauritius surrendered to the Salem court a couple of days ago. It is a suspected that a senior medical student from Kerala arranged by a middle-man named Govindaraj wrote the examination for Irfan.
Shafi has admitted that a sum of Rs 20 lakh was handed over for the impersonation, the CB-CID SP added.
Probe extended to college that was shut
Meanwhile, the probe sleuths are also extending the investigation to check the role of 35 students of a private medical college at Kanchipuram that was shut down by the central government in 2016. The college was closed as it lacked basic facilities. The probe team has sought the details of these students to the Tamil Nadu medical educational directorate.
Udit Surya, Praveen, Rahul and Irfan, who have been arrested in connection with the NEET case, were first-year students of this college. There were 102 students at the college. Once the college was shut, 66 students, who had got admission through NEET, were admitted to other medical colleges.
Some of the arrested candidates have handed over the voice recordings of the threats they received from the middlemen innvolved to the investigation team.
However, the other 36, who got medical seats without writing the entrance exam, had approached the High Court against the closure. But they did not get a favourable verdict. All the four students, arrested over the impersonation case, are part of this group. The probe team suspects that the other students could have won admission to medical colleges through fraudulent means.
Statements of a middleman, Govindaraj, also made the probe officers to follow up on this lead.
The scam was exposed after Udit Surya, a first-year medical student at Theni Medical College, was caught after his college card photo did not match the NEET ID photo. The candidates allegedly found imposters to write the exam on their behalf with the help of middlemen or agents.
Impersonators in Kerala?
The probe officers are yet to zoom in on the imposters who wrote the exam for the candidates. The sleuths suspect the imposters to be Keralites.
The TN cops had earlier arrested a Thiruvananthapuram native, George Joseph, the owner of an entrance coaching centre. They said that the questioning of George was under way and that they would soon find the other middlemen in the case.
The officers have initiated procedures to check the certificate of all first-year students of the government medical colleges, including the Theni college.
Meanwhile, the court will on Thursday consider the bail plea of Udit Surya and his father Dr Venkitesh, who were earlier arrested and remanded.
