BENGALURU: Students from top colleges were allegedly involved in the postgraduate medical exam scam of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS). One of these colleges belongs to Horticulture Minister Shamanur Shivashankarappa.
An inquiry into the scam had found that in the May/June 2014 exams, some answer scripts had been tampered with, and sheets had been removed and replaced with new ones and restitched.
According to an FIR filed by the university a week ago, a copy of which is available with Express, of the 10 accused students, five are in MD general surgery, three in MD radiology and one each in MD dermatalogy and MS orthopedics.
Based on an internal inquiry report submitted by the syndicate committee headed by Dr Rajesh Shenoy, and forensic reports, the university filed an FIR on October 30 at the Tilak Nagar police station against 10 students.
However, college authorities have denied that the malpractice occurred within their premises.
Dr M G Gopal, principal of KIMS, Bengaluru told Express, “There is no chance of the incident occurring in the premises of our institution. The university and the inquiry agencies are the authorities who can actually reveal what has happened. As per information that I have received from the head of the department, the student who has been booked in the scam is a good student, and there have been no past instances of the person being involved in any malpractice.”
The college authorities also claim that the accused students have completed their course and the colleges cannot take any action against them. RGUHS is the only authority that can take action, they said.
The scam was revealed after an anonymous letter about malpractices in this year’s postgraduate medical exams reached university authorities in August 2014. Taking the information in the letter seriously, the university constituted an internal inquiry committee. The committee sent answer scripts for forensic tests, which helped identify the scripts which were tampered with.
Most Security Features Tampered
The malpractice in the post-graduate medical examinations conducted in May/June 2014 involved tampering with various security features, according to the forensics report.
The RGUHS answer scripts have a triangular punch mark measuring 1.5cm x 2.2cm on the top left corner. The micro letters in it are invisible to the naked eye. In some sheets, the punch marks were missing while in a few others, different shades of blue dry patches were noticed on the bottom right side.
Some other answer scripts had the logo, the security sticker and had been stitched back, indicating that they were tampered with after they were handed over to the invigilators.
The report also notes that there were glue marks on some of the sheets, indicating removal of the security sticker and an attempt to re-paste it. Most of the tampered papers had breakage of thread and, in case of one particular answer script, discontinuity in the serial number on one of the sheets, the report said.