Mumbai: A fortnight after three persons were arrested for tampering with Mumbai University (MU) students’ answersheets on October 15, Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) police are on the lookout for three more staffers involved in the tampering. The peons allegedly helped the arrested trio conduct malpractice within the Kalina campus. Police also suspect involvement of others, including senior MU officials and are investigating the matter.
According to police, the needle of suspicion points to involvement of the three peons in the answersheet tampering scam, as they have not reported to work ever since the arrest of the two peons—Sangamesh Kamble and Sandeep Palkar—on October 10.
Kamble and Palkar confessed to tampering with the answersheet of an MSc ATKT student, Sayyed Nizamuddin, on payment of Rs8,000 to get him the blank answersheet submitted during the examination. According to the plan, Kamble and Palkar were to sneak in Nizamuddin’s answersheet from the registrar’s office and swap the written answersheet into the bundle. However, the plan was unearthed after a head of department saw the incident captured on the CCTV camera and reported the matter to the BKC police.
During interrogation, Kamble and Palkar had named a peon to be their accomplice. While scanning the call data records, police came across two more frequently-dialled phone numbers contacted around the time of tampering. Kalpana Gadekar, senior inspector of BKC police station said, “The role of three more peons was established during the probe.
To know about their whereabouts, when we checked the attendance register, it was learnt they had been skipping work since the arrest of the the two peons.” Police are in touch with the company who provides the peons to MU. Meanwhile, MU has set up a panel to conduct an internal inquiry and decide on further action.