Thiruvananthapuram: Police confirms answer sheet fraud

Thiruvananthapuram: The police have received more details about the answer sheets seized from the residence of SFI leader Sivarenjith, accused in the stabbing incident in the University College.

The University College authorities confirmed to the police that one of the seized answer sheets was given to another student, Pranav, during an examination. The forged seal of the physical education director was used for marking attendance on days Sivarenjith was absent from college, they said.

Pranav, who is the unit committee member of the SFI committee, was ranked second in the police civil officer rank list of the PSC in which Sivarenjith emerged the topper. The police could not clarify how the other answer sheets reached Sivarenjith’s house.

Though, he gave a statement that the seized answer sheets were those abandoned by the college authorities just before the NAAC accreditation inspection, the police have not taken it at face value.

The accused had obtained attendance on days they bunked classes with the help of forged letters using the fake seal.

The police also found that Sivarenjith had written love letters and lyrics of film songs in his answer sheets during the university examination. This was to mislead the invigilators that he was writing the examination. The police suspected that the plan was to replace these papers with answer sheets filled with correct answ-ers by influencing some non-teaching staff .  

However, the Crime Branch probe announced by state police chief Loknath Behera into the seizure of answer sheets has not begun it as a report on it was not obtained from the city police commissioner.

The police have not yet got a formal complaint from either the Kerala University or the University College authorities.

Mr Behera had earlier said that the university had submitted a complaint to the police in this regard.

Later, it was found that he had mistaken the complaint submitted by the university recommending a Crime Branch probe after three degree certificates which were submitted to the university for scrutiny by employers were found fake.

Mini Dijo Kappen, controller of examinations in charge, had earlier submitted a report to the syndicate that answer sheets allotted by the university were found from the house of Sivarenjith.

Each college is given an answer sheet according to a serial number.

The recovered answer sheets were part of the bundles of answer papers received by the University College on May 5, 2015 and April 1, 2016 as per the serial numbers.