A few weeks after the NEET impersonation scam brought to light a web of deception and malpractice in the state, a girl student and her mother were arrested on Saturday, taking the total number of arrests to 10, according to The Hindu.
According to reports, the student has been identified as Priyanka, a first-year MBBS student at Saveetha Medical College, Chennai. Priyanka and her mother Mynavathi were taken in for questioning by the police.
Investigations reportedly revealed that the student had reportedly altered her scorecard to secure admission. The Times of India reported that Priyanka had tampered with her marksheet and increased the score to 397 to gain a seat under management quota at Saveetha Medical College.
Priyanka and Mynavathi were produced before a Judicial Magistrate Court in Theni and remanded to 14-day judicial custody on Saturday evening. College dean J Damodharan too was also questioned by the police.
The NEET impersonation scam came to light when the Dean of the Government Medical College in Theni got two emails from a man named Ashok Krishnan, complaining against KV Udit Surya, a first-year student.
According to the complaint, Surya failed NEET twice and cleared the recent exam opting for Mumbai as the exam centre, where a proxy wrote the entrance exam.
The college authorities found two different photographs. Later, the police arrested Surya, his doctor father Venkatesan, and an agent in Kerala for hiring a proxy to write the entrance exam.
So far, four student-parent duos have been arrested. The previous arrest was of Dr Shafi, a private practitioner from Vaniyambadi, who was found to be the link between the students and the broker. His son, Mohammed Irfan, was picked up. The authorities also arrested George Joseph, an agent from Thiruvananthapuram and are on the lookout for another agent called Rasheed.