EAMCET paper leak: 2 more held, total arrests mount to 17

Telangana CID, which is probing the EAMCET-II question paper leak, today arrested two more brokers, taking the total number of arrests in connection with the case to 17 and recovered over Rs 16 lakh from one of them. "In the EAMCET-II-2016 (medical) entrance examination question paper leakage case, two brokers -- Mohd Iqbal Khan alias Iqbal, an education consultant belonging to Palwal district of Haryana and G Venkatesh, educational consultant and native of Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, were arrested by the CID and Rs 16.45 lakh were recovered from Venkatesh," a release from the DGP office said. Iqbal is working as an educational consultant at Delhi and Bengaluru and he arranged training classes for 20 students in Bengaluru with the active connivance of other accused brokers. Venkatesh runs educational consultancy business at KPHB here and took seven students to Kolkata camp, it said. Efforts are on to apprehend the other brokers and accused persons of the question paper leakage, CID officials said. Meanwhile, the Director General of Police Anurag Sharma issued orders to suspend CID DSP Balu Jadhav and head constable Sadasiva Rao for indulging in "gross misconduct" and allegedly accepting bribe from an accused broker and letting him off from the case. On July 25, the CID had registered a case under relevant sections of IPC and other provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Public Examinations (Prevention of Malpractices and Unfair means) Act, 1997, after it found in its preliminary inquiry that there was prima facie a case for registering an FIR. Investigation also revealed that students appearing for TS EAMCET-II-2016 (Medical) examination from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were taken to camps set up in at least five cities about two to three days prior to the exam and were given practice with the leaked copies of two question papers consisting of 320 questions with correct answers, CID had said. At a review meeting held here on August 2, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was informed by CID officials that Delhi turned out to be the centre for leak and there were 34 brokers, who conspired to sell the paper and as many as 200 parents were in touch with the brokers to buy the question papers. The Engineering, Agriculture and Medical Common Entrance Test (EAMCET-II) was conducted on July 9 and the results were declared on July 14. The exam was conducted by Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) in Hyderabad.