Medical Entrance Test Scam Unearthed in West Bengal

A medical entrance test scam has been unearthed in West Bengal in which senior medical students, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, impersonate for medical career aspirants and sit for their entrance exams.

A 25-year-old woman, who worked as an agent for several distance learning courses, is the latest to be arrested Sunday by police in Durgapur under Burdwan district in connection with the racket.

"The racket is spread far and wide. We are tracking down those who are involved. So far, the Kolkata Police Detective Department (DD) has arrested four people," deputy commissioner of Kolkata Police (DD) Ajoy Kumar told IANS Monday.

"The case is still in the investigation stage and thus we don't want to reveal any information for the sake of investigation," he added.

Sumita Chatterjee, the woman arrested on Sunday, used to act as a bridge between the candidate and the kingpin of the racket. This year she had also introduced a girl to this kingpin and it was found that the girl paid Rs.600,000 to enrol her name in one of the institutes that arranged for the dummy candidates.

According to police, a second-year medical student of a university near Kanpur wrote the exam for the girl candidate and secured for her a rank in the list of 700. The Kanpur student is now on the run.

The detective department Saturday arrested three people - Mihir Jha and Ranvijay Pathak of Bihar and Ayan Mukhopadhyay of Hooghly district in West Bengal - in connection with the racket.

Jha had passed his MBBS from Calcutta Medical College and Hospital and is now a student of the postgraduate medical course in the SSKM Hospital here. He had secured twelfth position in the postgraduate medical entrance exam.

The Kolkata police detective department started the investigation into the matter on June 18 after receiving an unnamed letter about the goings-on.

Following the tip-off, the sleuths raided a house at 230/B on A.J.C. Bose Road near Minto Park in central Kolkata and came to know about an organisation called DAMS, which had been running the medical entrance racket for the last two years here.

Most of these dummy examinees are from Uttar Pradesh. All these dummies are either second or third year medical students. The investigators also said that several doctors and medical students were involved in the chain.

Preliminary investigation suggests that a dummy gets Rs.100,000 to Rs.150,000 for writing the exam and the agent receives Rs.30,000 to Rs.40,000 for persuading a candidate to enrol at the institutes that make the arrangements.

Police sources said the arrested accused Mihir Kumar Jha ran an institute called 'Meditrance' where senior teachers from outside West Bengal visited as well.

Source-ANI
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