06 June,2012 08:48 AM IST | | Vinay Dalvi
The Mumbai Crime Branch yesterday claimed to have solved the Mumbai University Engineering paper leaks case, and arrested 14 people for their involvement in the same.u00a0
Of these, two were professors, five were peons, two were lab assistants and five were students. In all, three engineering papers were leaked. The deputy registrar of the varsity had registered a case after the papers were leaked. Two separate cases were cracked by cops in relation to the paper leaks.
Cops traced the first case to Karjat. Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy said, "The Engineering exams held on May 26 were Basic Electrical and Electronic Engineering (BEE). Applied Physics II was conducted on May 23. Papers of all these were leaked by the group." Unit VIII of the Crime Branch solved the cases. Cops learnt that Professor Milind Sudham Lad and Professor Shrikant Hanumant More of Konkan Gyanpeeth Engineering College in Karjat had acquired the papers.
Lad, who ran his own private coaching class, wanted to give the papers to his students. Lad's acquaintance Vivek Gaikwad, a lab assistant at Yadavrao Tasgaonkar College of Engineering and Management, then got in touch with another lab assistant Sachin Krishna Lad, who was assistant to a chief examiner in charge of setting the BEE question paper. "When the chief examiner set the paper and gave it to Sachin for scanning, he took printouts of it, and then gave it to Vivek, who later sold it for Rs 3,000 each to students," said Roy. Two pupils have also been nabbed - second year student Anirudh Musale of G V Acharya Institute of Engineering and Technology and third year student Shadab Raut of Yadavrao Tasgaonkar College of Engineering and Management.
The peon link
In the second case, police arrested five peons and three students for selling the Maths II paper. "We have arrested Bharat Singh, who works at the manuscripts department of the Mumbai University in Kalina. His job is to distribute papers to different colleges and sort them," said Roy. Ganesh Jadhav peon at Nallasopara school who had earlier been suspended from Mumbai University for leaking papers, met Paresh Tendulkar, a peon in Kalina University. He in turn roped in Vikas Ujjainwala into the racker, and Ujjainwala approached Premchand Kamble.u00a0It was Kamble who inducted Bharat Singh into the ring, and Singh supplied them with the papers. Singh also directly sold papers to three students - Gaurav Talekar, Sunil Mohite and Kiran Labade, students of the Yadavrao Tasgaonkar College of Engineering and Management," said Roy.
Papers posted on FB
The group initially sold the papers for Rs 10,000 each, but brought down prices to Rs 8,000, and finally to Rs 500. Students who got their hands on the papers at the low rates then posted them on Facebook, for the benefit of their friends. It was this that helped cops trace the students. The students have been booked on charges of theft and criminal conspiracy under the IT Act and the Maharashtra Malpractices Act. "We have recovered around Rs 40,000 as well as the question papers, and they are being kept in police custody June 8," said Nisar Tamboli, deputy commissioner of police, Detection Crime Branch.u00a0