Shivakumar Swamy, the key suspect in the PU paper leakage case, who is on the run, has sought anticipatory bail. This has come at a time when the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has intensified its manhunt to nab him.
CID sources confirmed that Shivakumar’s advocates had filed an anticipatory bail plea in the Additional Sessions Court in the city on Thursday. The petition is expected to come up for hearing on Monday.
Meanwhile, CID sleuths have been closing in on all known associates of Shivakumar. Nagendra, a Ph.D. student in biochemistry at Bangalore University, who stayed at a room in the SC, ST hostel on the Jnanabharathi campus, is now on its radar.
A known associate of Shivakumar, it has now been established that he also sold the question paper to numerous people on March 20. Even as he is on the run, CID sleuths on Friday searched his hostel room and recovered incriminating material. CID sources said that he was in no way linked to the Physical Education teacher, Manjunath, arrested earlier, and was involved in an all together unconnected channel through which the leaked question paper proliferated. However, the source for both Manjunath and Nagendra was the same, Shivakumar, CID sources confirmed. Nagendra also runs an Intellectual Correspondence College in Nagarabhavi, which is also suspected to be a channel for leaking question papers of various examinations.
CID officials suspect that the same set of people involved in the leakage of the March 21 chemistry exam, may be behind the one on March 31.
CID sources said they will send the handwritten questions used to leak the question paper in both cases for forensic examination. “It looks like the same people have written down the questions. But, we want to be sure,” a senior CID official said.
