KL Report
SRINAGAR
The Crime Branch of state police has claimed unearthing of a multi-million-rupee scam where candidates seeking admission to professional colleges in Jammu and Kashmir paid huge sums of money and stayed in a private hotel to write their tests.
Professional entrance tests are conducted every year in Jammu and Kashmir by the Board of Professional Entrance Exams (BOPEE) for selecting candidates from thousands of aspirants for medical, engineering, agricultural and other degree courses.
The Crime Branch registered a case following complaints about the selections made by BOPEE in 2012, and started investigations.
According to sources many candidates finishing at the top of the entrance test had poor academic records.
Crime Branch sources said these candidates selected for MBBS courses after passing the BOPEE 2012 test, were found performing very poorly in their professional colleges.
“From the very start, the conduct of the then BOPEE chairman, Mushtaq Ahmad Peer, was under our scanner. Two close associates of Peer had sold the BOPEE 2012 test papers to over a dozen candidates belonging to a particular area in south Kashmir Islamabad district,” sources said.
“After accepting huge sums of money from the parents of these candidates, the BOPEE officials set up a special centre for them in a hotel on the Boulevard Road in Srinagar,” they added.
Sources also confirmed that Peer’s residences were raided and searched by a Crime Branch team during the night in Srinagar and Jammu and documents concerning movable and immovable properties were seized.
“Bank accounts and records of immovable properties of those parents who had paid hefty amounts to Peer and his flunkeys have also been examined,” sources said. Adding, “Soon involved people will be charged in the court of law.”
