Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Nov 20: Former Chairman of Board of Professional Entrance Exams (BOPEE), Mushtaq Ahmad Peer, today surrendered before the Crime Branch which is investigating Multi-million scam against him where candidates seeking admission to professional colleges allegedly paid huge sums of money and stayed in a private hotel to write their tests.
Sources said, "Peer, was avoiding his arrest from some days, but this morning he surrendered before the Crime Branch." They added that the Crime Branch immediately started questioning him. Professional entrance tests are conducted every year in Jammu and Kashmir by the Board of Professional Entrance Exams (BOPEE) for selecting candidates from thousands of aspirants for medical, engineering and other degree courses.
The Crime Branch registered a case following complaints about the selections made by BOPEE in 2012, and started investigations. Sources said that many candidates finishing at the top of the entrance test had poor academic records.
Crime Branch sources said these candidates selected for MBBS courses after passing the BOPEE 2012 test, were found very poor performers in their professional colleges. "From the very start, the conduct of the then BOPEE chairman, Mushtaq Ahmad Peer, was under our scanner. Two close associates of Peer had sold the BOPEE 2012 test papers to over a dozen candidates belonging to a particular area in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district," sources said.
"After accepting huge sums of money from the parents of these candidates, the BOPEE officials set up a special centre for them in a hotel on the Boulevard Road in Srinagar," they added.
Peer's residences in Srinagar and Jammu were raided and searched by a Crime Branch team two days ago and documents concerning movable and immovable properties were seized.
"Bank accounts and records of immovable properties of those parents who had paid hefty amounts to Peer and his flunkeys have also been examined," sources said. |
