New Delhi, Jul 29 (IANS): The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday said that it has filed a supplementary charge sheet against 73 people in connection with its probe into the Vyapam scam case related to MPPMT-2012 examinations.
A CBI spokesperson here said that the agency has filed supplementary chargesheet against 73 accused, including 13 new accused.
The official said that the CBI had registered a case on July 31, 2015 against 587 accused and taken over the investigation of the case earlier registered in Bhopal on the Supreme Court's July 9, 2015 order transferring the investigation of Vyapam scam cases from the STF to it.
In the case, it was alleged that the accused had adopted a unique 'engine bogie' system or method of cheating in MPPMT-2012 by engaging intelligent students from out of Madhya Pradesh as solver candidates for allowing copying of their answers by the beneficiary or bogie candidates and also manipulation of digital data and OMR answer sheets of accused candidates for passing these candidates in MPPMT-2012.
The official said that the CBI had earlier filed a charge sheet against 592 accused including 245 new accused in the court of Special Judge, Vyapam cases, Bhopal on November 23, 2017, and during further investigation, found real identities of impersonators, traced absconders etc.
"In the supplementary charge sheet, 54 accused persons related to manipulation of digital data and OMR answer sheets and 19 accused related to impersonation were charge sheeted," he said.
He further said that it was alleged that 19 accused candidates had deliberately left ovals of 120 to 130 questions blank on their respective OMR answer sheets during the examination and the accused Vyapam officials manipulated the digital data of OMR answer sheets (computer data) and subsequently blackened the corresponding answer circles in the OMR answer sheets so as to illegally pass these candidates.
"Untampered data of accused candidates was also recovered and it showed that these candidates had filled up less answer circles. In conspiracy with these candidates, their guardians and middlemen, the said Vyapam officials manipulated digital data and OMR answer sheets of these candidates to enhance their marks and to illegally pass them in MPPMT-2012," he said.
It was also alleged that the then Principal System Analyst of Vyapam, Bhopal had prepared the excel sheet containing the names of the accused candidates, their sponsors, the roll numbers, amounts paid or to be paid, marks and category etc. and the said excel sheet was also recovered, he said.
The official said that it was further alleged that impersonation was found out during investigation and 16 accused candidates were named in chargesheet as the impersonators who belonged to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan.
"The real identities of these impersonators were ascertained by making use of innovative techniques including obtaining and scrutinising data of the candidates of PMT Examinations from 2010-2014 of some states and AIPMT etc, details of bank account, credit cards or debit cards used for making payment of the examination fees and identifying or checking social media profiles created by using the mobile phone numbers, email IDs which were filled in the application or counselling forms of impersonators, database of photos of more than 18 lakh aspirant PMT students, MBBS students as well as registered doctors collected from medical colleges, coaching centres, MCI, Medical Education Directorates of some states etc and data base along with photos of untraceable or unidentified candidates scrutinised through experts and photo matching exercise," the official said.