A racket to ‘help’ NEET aspirants in the exam was busted in Godhra town hours before the students were to take the all-India test on May 5. This was after a tip-off was received by the Panchamahal district collector.
On Thursday, Vadodara special operations group (SOG) detained a Vadodara-based visa and foreign education consultancy owner, Parshuram Roy, who allegedly collaborated with a school teacher Tushar Bhatt and Arif Vahora, a BJP functionary in Godhra, to ‘help’ the students. They charged each student Rs 10 lakh.
After the elections were completed on Tuesday, an offence was registered against the trio under IPC 120B (criminal conspiracy), cheating and criminal breach of trust, and the Prevention of Corruption Act. Roy, who operates a firm named Roy Overseas, told the media that the allegations were baseless. Sources said the police have launched a search for Vahora.
Cash seized
Cash of Rs 7 lakh was seized from Bhatt’s car. Roy and Vahora had allegedly forwarded the list of students for whom Bhatt was supposed to give answers in the exam in Jay Jalaram School in Paravdi. Bhatt is a teacher in Godhra but lives in Vadodara.
The collector received information about irregularities during the NEET exam on Sunday. He informed the district education officer (DEO) who reached the school along with other officials and the police. In the principal’s room, they asked for names and details of those present and one of them turned out to be Bhatt, who was the deputy centre superintendent at the exam centre.
Two smartphones were found in Bhatt’s possession. One of these phones had WhatsApp messages from Roy who had sent images of a list of 16 students with roll numbers and examination centres to Bhatt on Saturday. On Sunday, Roy again informed Bhatt that two students had dropped out and 14 remained. He later sent a message saying only one was cancelled and 15 remained. When asked about the details of these messages, Bhatt confessed that these were students for whom Rs 10 lakh was to be taken to help them in the exam.
The officials also found two prints of lists of students with Bhatt. Some names were ticked on the list. These included 20 taking the exam at the Jay Jalaram School, Thermal, and six at the Jay Jalaram School centre, Godhra.
According to the FIR lodged with the Godhra Taluka police station on Wednesday night, Bhatt told the officials that the students were not supposed to answer questions that they did not know. Bhatt was to fill in these answers after the papers were submitted. Bhatt revealed that names of six students appearing in the Godhra centre were given to him by Vahora who also gave him Rs 7 lakh as advance on Sunday morning.
