BENGALURU: More than 1,500 answer scripts were tampered with in the exams conducted by Bangalore University’s distance education programme in December 2013.
This has been revealed in a fresh evaluation of the cash-for-marks scam by the university, which took up the review on the recommendations of an internal inquiry committee headed by Prof Jeevan Kumar.
Speaking to Express, a senior official of the evaluation section said, “It has been identified that the tampering mainly happened at the custodians’ level while entering marks on the marks list from (answer) scripts. In a few cases, there is the involvement of evaluators also.”
“We were shocked to see that single digits have been changed into first class and higher first class marks,” the official said. If the original score was 00, it was changed to 70 while entering it on the marks list.
The results of these 1,500 students have been withheld, and the issue is being placed before the Syndicate meeting scheduled on Wednesday. “We will proceed with the case after the Syndicate takes a decision in this regard,” the official said. According to sources, the university may file a FIR against the custodian of the examinations in December 2013.
Registrar (Evaluation) K N Ningegowda said, “The case has been handed over to CID and the internal inquiry report is ready.” It would be forwarded to the government for further action.
Meanwhile, university officials said several people are behind the scam, and even the involvement of university staff, study centre owners and some former Syndicate members is evident. “Let the inquiry reveal the names,” they said.
The Case
On April 29, 2014 the city police arrested some university staff, including former Syndicate member K B Vedamurthy, and had registered a suo motu case following complaints that money was being collected for passing students taking the distance education exams.
Later, the case was transferred to CID.