Considering the magnitude of the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K) seat blocking scam, the Central Crime Branch (CCB) will set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.
“With the scam getting bigger, it is time for a dedicated team to investigate the case, find the accused and recommend steps that can be taken to prevent such scams in the future,” said a senior police official, on condition of anonymity. The CCB will soon send a proposal with a list of names of police officials to the City Police Commissioner, who will then approve it.
Meanwhile, the CCB police have issued final show-cause notice to nine private medical colleges suspected to be involved in the seat-blocking scam. This is after the colleges failed to respond to the earlier show-cause notice issued during the first week of July. After issuing show-cause notice, the CCB had demanded explanation from the colleges on how over 500 seats were converted to management quota over the past few years.
“We had given them a week’s time and are now giving them a second chance to respond. If they fail to do so, we will raid the colleges and book the management as co-accused in the case,” said Abhishek Goel, Deputy Commissioner of Police of CB, who is supervising the investigations.
He said that more than 50 per cent of the students who availed seats through COMED-K did not get admission, facilitating the seats to get converted into management quota. He said each seat could have been sold at a whopping Rs. 1 crore to Rs. 1.5 crore. In May, the Central Industrial Security Force personnel at Kempegowda International Airport detained a few students who were behaving suspiciously.
When questioned, the students confessed to being part of the medical seat-blocking scam. They were handed over to jurisdictional police, following which the case was taken over by Central Crime Branch.
