The recent NEET impersonation scam that has rocked Tamil Nadu scam has left everyone with only two questions:
1) Who was that impersonator who cracked NEET?
2) Do you have his phone number?
The CB-CID told the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court that disgraced medical student KV Udit Suriya and his father K S Venkatesan, who were arrested in the NEET scam, have not yet revealed the name of the impersonator.
For a person to appear for the exam and crack the test at one go is a huge deal. Officials with the Directorate of Medical Education are mulling over the possibility that it was a medical student, someone who had managed to crack NEET themselves, or a person associated with a coaching centre and was reasonably well-equipped with the knowledge required to crack NEET. "Part of why we are taking fingerprints of all first year medical students it to find whether any of them were the perpertrator. They will be dealt with severely if that is the case," said a senior official with the DME.
The scam had come to light in September after the Dean of Government Theni Medical College, A K Rajendran, received two emails on September 11 and 13 stating that MBBS student K V Udit Surya got admitted to the college without having appeared for NEET, having used an impersonator instead. The father-son duo was nabbed by the CB-CID at Tirupati on September 25 and subsequently arrested the following day. Their judicial custody was recently extended by the Theni JM court till October 24. So far, the CB-CID has apprehended nine persons, including a broker and four students and their parents, in the case.
This group includes doctors, medical college students and also their parents. Over a dozen students attending medical colleges in Theni, Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu passed the entrance test by using impersonators who took the test for them in other states. Candidates allegedly engaged proxies to write the exam for them with the same credentials in several other centres to get admission to medical colleges.
Appearing on behalf of the CB-CID, State Public Prosecutor A Natarajan submitted that the duo was not cooperating with the investigation and that Venkatesan has still not revealed the name of the impersonator engaged by then to write the examination on behalf of Suriya. It was also informed to the court that Venkatesan, pursuant to dismissal of his bail plea by a Judicial Magistrate (JM) court, has moved another petition on Monday before the Principal District and Sessions Court in Theni. Recording the above facts, Justice GR Swaminathan, who heard the case, directed the Registry to call for Venkatesan's bail plea documents from the Sessions Court to hear the same along with Suriya's petition at the next hearing on October 17.
Following this scam, the Directorate of Medical Education has asked all medical colleges to collect three samples of thumb imprints of all first year medical students for forensic analysis.
