Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Nov 27: 110 students who appeared for examination with the purpose of becoming civil police landed in jail on the charges of leakage of civil police question paper and participation in conspiracy. Nine more have been handed over by the court to the custody of central crime branch (CCB) police here for further investigation.

All these students are said to be students of different colleges in the city. There are five girl students among those put behind the bars.

In an operation launched by the CCB police on November 24, as many as 119 persons were arrested. Out of them, main accused, Shivakumara Swamy and eight other students have been taken into custody by CCB investigating officer, Venugopal, for further probe.

As per the new law brought by Siddaramaiah-led government, buying or acquiring of question papers is an offence. In this backdrop, all the arrested students were produced in the court by a team of officials. 110 among them were remanded to judicial custody and the balance to CCB custody.

The other prime accused, Basavaraj, has remained elusive, and his house at Tumakuru has been found locked. The officials have information that he is the kingpin of the leakage operation. He had madeXerox copies running to 3,000 pages and brought the same to Kalmatha School near Shravanabelagola from Tumakuru. When the police swooped on this school, Basavaraj managed to escape by a whisker. While all the accused were found at one spot, Basavaraj was at another spot, and this enabled him to flee from the police clutches.

Crime branch officials said that an operation has been launched to apprehend Basavaraj.

The officials said that the five girl students, when questioned, just began to cry as they did not have any idea about the large scale operation of the leakage network. As the police came to know that they were enticed by other candidates appearing for the examination, they were not taken into custody for interrogation but sent to judicial custody as per court orders. The interrogation of all the students would begin from Tuesday, police officials informed.