CHANDIGARH, Nov 15:
As a fallout of the cheating racket unearthed by CBI, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) here has cancelled its MD/MS entrance examination held here last week.
“The examination has been cancelled. Now, another date for holding the entrance test for the MD (doctor of medicine) /MS (master of surgery) will be announced later,” PGIMER’s spokesperson, Manju Wadwalkar said here today.
She said that in the absence of PGIMER Director Dr Y K Chawla, a meeting was chaired by the institute’s acting director, Dr Vinay Sakhuja and attended by senior functionaries, after which the decision to cancel the examination was taken.
The decision will affect 7,300 candidates, who appeared for the 78 post graduation seats in various departments of PGIMER in 11 different examination centres that were set up in this city.
PGIMER sources said that the new MD/MS entrance examination was likely to be held in December this year.
They said that the decision to cancel the entrance examination was taken keeping in mind that it was not known how many candidates were beneficiaries in the cheating, and therefore, it would be in the interest of all genuine candidates, to take such a step.
Earlier, the institute had withheld for an indefinite period the result of the 7,300 candidates who had appeared for its MD/MS entrance examination on Saturday after it came to fore during the CBI investigations that seven girls nabbed by the investigating agency on the same day were appearing merely to leak the question paper thereby acting as facilitators for some other candidates.
Besides the seven girls, mostly matriculates and Class XII passouts, the CBI had also arrested nine others, including kingpin of the cheating racket.
The girls, who were acting as facilitators for other beneficiaries, were using hi-tech gadgets including bluetooth devices, smart phones and buttonhole cameras to transmit questions to other gang members who were outside the examination centres after which solved questions were relayed back.
The gang kingpin would provide sophisticated equipment like pen-scanners, micro-earphones with bluetooth facility and wireless ear plugs to the students, who had hidden them in places like undergarments, collars and hair bands.
Special clothes were ordered for the arrested accused girls appearing in the entrance test and the devices were fixed at the time of stitching of the garments, CBI investigations have revealed.
Soon after the question paper was given to the students, the accused girls would scan the entire paper using the specially designed pen, which was then transmitted out using the sophisticated gadgets.
The answers were relayed back to the students using the minute hearing aids.
The key accused Dr K Gangadhar Reddy, whom CBI arrested from Patna, and P Gurivi Reddy, kingpin, who carried out the entire cheating operation here, had been arrested by the police in Andhra Pradesh two years back in the Engineering and Medical Common Entrance Test paper leak case, and were out on bail later.
The PGIMER had earlier said that there was no lapse on its part that it failed to detect that the accused girls who are from Andhra Pradesh were not meeting the eligibility criteria of having a valid MBBS degree for appearing in the examination, as the institute only takes photocopy of certificates from them while the original documents are only verified once the candidates have cleared the examination.
The accused girls, who appeared in the examination, were provided “special training” and given Rs one lakh each.
According to CBI sources, the gang used to charge hefty sums of money per candidate.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time that fingers have been raised over the entire admission process pertaining to the postgraduate medical courses at the PGIMER.
Two years back, the premier institute was hit by an admissions racket, after CBI arrested two junior resident doctors—on charge of fraudulently securing admission in the postgraduate courses.
During the investigations, it was allegedly found that both had secured admission through impersonation. (PTI)
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