Telangana medical entrance test papers leaked from a Delhi press

The state government cancelled the test, which is now set to be held again in the last week of August.

Telangana medical entrance test papers were leaked from a printing press in Delhi and a gang of mafia sold them to at least 136 parents at a price of Rs 60 lakh per head, 15 days before the test was conducted on 9 July. As a result, the state government has cancelled the Eamcet-2 (Engineering, agriculture and medical entrance test) and is set to hold it again in the last week of August.

The ease with which the gang members, some of whom had earlier been arrested in similar question paper leakage cases, managed to get the two sets of Eamcet-2 shocked the sleuths of Telangana CID, who probed the leak and submitted a report to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) on Friday. The CID officials told the media that the test papers were printed at the Kapoor Printing Press on the outskirts of Delhi.

The cops are still investigating whether the owners of the printing press were hand-in-glove with the gang led by Mohammad Khalid or just some of its employees had done it for money. The printing press, known for high security features is also the printer of many competitive exams held by the education boards from several northern states. The cops are probing whether the top officials of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University ( JNTU) based out of Hyderabad had any role in the leak. Usually, the JNTU, which holds the Eamcet every year, gets two sets of question papers with 160 marks printed in two different printing presses from two cities. But, this year, both the sets were printed at Kapoor Press and both got leaked.

The cancellation of Eamcet-2 has created chaos in Hyderabad as over 56,000 students who appeared for the medical stream had to reappear for the test in a month.

Most of the medical school aspirants will be writing their sixth entrance test this year — as already they appeared for NEET 1 or 2, Eamcet 1 and 2 held by both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the past two months. Hundreds of Eamcet-2 rankers and their parents took out rallies in Hy- derabad demanding that the test should not be scrapped, as it would plunge their future into a crisis.

The police arrested them when they tried to march towards the Secretariat to meet the ministers and submit a memorandum on Friday. Some students sobbed inconsolably and pleaded with the cops not to cancel the test. They demanded that the government should only cancel the ranks of the 130 odd students who had purchased the question paper, but not scrap the entire test. “Why should we who studied hard and scored good ranks be punished for no fault of ours? Already, we have appeared for five medical entrance tests this season and cannot take any more,” Ch Keerthi, an Eamcet 17th ranker told this newspaper on Saturday.

But the Chief Minister was told by the top officials and the cops who investigated the leak that the rules of the Eamcet would not permit taking action against only the accused and allow others to take admissions in case the question paper was leaked. “There are many legal problems to punish only the accused, and we have no other option but to cancel the whole exam,” additional CID D.G. Satyanarain said.

So far, the CID has arrested six persons — Rajagopala Reddy, Shaik Ramesh, Tarun Raj, A. Venkata Ramana, Tirumal and Bandaru Ravindra — in the scam and is searching for a few more persons including the mafia kingpin Khaleel. Rajagopala Reddy was arrested in 2007 and 2010 in a medical entrance tests question papers leak in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Currently, he is out on bail. The CID estimated that the mafia entered into deals worth Rs 80 crore with parents for leaking the papers. The gang took the students to different cities and handed over the papers so that they could practise the answers. Telangana political joint action committee chairman M. Kodandaram demanded the resignation of both medical and health and higher education ministers in the Eamcet-2 scam. He also demanded that the investigation should be handed over to the CBI, instead of the state CID. The Aam Admi Party has no plans to bring “Bihari Babu” Shatrughan Sinha, currently BJP’s Lok Sabha MP from Patna Sahib, into the party fold as of now.

According to a source in AAP, it makes no political sense to bring Sinha into the party. “There is no election in Bihar in the near future. Why will he quit the membership of Lok Sabha now? It makes no political sense for either AAP or him to desert his party to join us,” the source told The Sunday Guardian.

There was speculation in political circles that AAP was trying to woo Shatrughan Sinha to join it following a tweet by AAP leader Kumar Vishwas. Vishwas had hinted that Navjot Sidhu, Shatrughan Sinha and Kirti Azad may join AAP.

The source argued that Sinha does not have organisational skills and his entry into the party at this moment may not bear fruit. “He is a well-known and popular face in Bihar, but he cannot lay the foundation of the organisation. Thus, the move will not be beneficial for us,” he added.

Sinha has been defiant of the BJP leadership for quite some time. In fact, he had also met Aam Admi Party leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal last year and said that the AAP government was working fine. He also shared the dais with Kejriwal, much to the inconvenience of the BJP leadership.

The AAP source, however, said that the party would take a call when the time was “right”. “The party may think of bringing some good faces from different parts in order to widen its acceptability. There are many areas where the party is spreading out slowly, but steadily. But this is not the right moment as far as Shatrughan Sinha is concerned,” the source said.

Vishwas’ hint came following Navjot Singh Sidhu upping his ante against the BJP leadership. In a press conference this week, Sidhu alleged that the BJP wanted to keep him away from his state Punjab.

Though Sidhu has resigned from the Rajya Sabha, he is yet to resign from the BJP. The party’s Punjab unit, too, maintains that Sidhu is still a part of the BJP.