Mumbai University answer paper scam unearthed

The Mumbai police on Saturday busted a new scam involving examination papers. The officials have arrested eight Mumbai University staff, including clerks and custodians.

The case came to light when, earlier this week, the Bhandup police received a tip that an agent was meeting some students to give them answer papers. The officers were surprised since most of the times it was the question paper that was leaked and wondered what good a leaked answer paper could do.

“We still sent our officers to investigate. It was then that PSI Shiv Shankar Bhosle and three other officers nabbed a student and an agent,” said a senior officer.

The two people nabbed led the police to piece together the whole scam. “The students would not fill in answers to questions they didn’t know. Following this, they would wait for the exams to end and then contact an agent. This agent had contacts with the peons and clerks in the University and would inform them about the said student,” said the officer. “After the peon was informed, he would ask for a picture of the student’s hall ticket to be sent via WhatsApp which would then be forwarded to the clerk. The custodian, the main man, would be contacted last and then a place would be arranged where the answer paper could be handed over to the first agent,” he said.

Once the papers were given to the agent, he would contact the student. “The student would then fill in the necessary spaces with correct answers and hand it back to the agent and the answer paper would follow the same route back and the custodian would insert it back in the bundle,” said the officer. Sources informed that all this cost the students Rs 15,000 to Rs 16,000.

“The students could even take the paper home for 24 hours and correct, check and change all answers. This would cost them an additional Rs 5,000,” he said. The police also informed that the custodian of the paper would have a fixed share of Rs7,000 and the rest would be divided among others, including agents.

While the current scam was busted in connection with mechanical engineering papers, the police suspect the same could be going in other streams and branches too. “The detained students are from the second year of Mech. Engineering and most of the answer papers demanded were of the subject Applied Mathematics,” he said. The police expect more arrests and have started detailed investigations.

Those arrested have been identified as Prabhakar Vaze (50), the custodian, clerks Siddesh Jadhav (26), Rohan More (25), Sandeep Jadhav (28) and peons Dinkar Mhatre (34), Mithun More (28), Chiman Solanki (41).

The police has also detained seven more people of which two are students and may charge them too. All the accused have been booked under relevant sections and remanded to police custody.