The Central Crime Branch police unearthed a fake Comed-K UGET question paper racket on Saturday night and arrested three persons, including a former bank employee.

The police also set free 12 girls and 14 boys, candidates from outside the State, who had been locked up in four rooms of an apartment and ensured that they reached UGET centres in the City and outside.  

They recovered Rs 6 lakh, four cellphones and 41 fake question papers of physics, chemistry, mathematics and botany subjects. The suspects are Rajagopal Reddy (60) of Koramangala, C T Basavaraju (37) from Ashoknagar in Tumkur and Santosh (25) from Theerthapur in Chikka­nayakanalli, Tumkur district.

Police Commissioner B G Jyothiprakash Mirji said that on a tip-off, the police raided a service apartment, recovered the material and arrested the suspects. The accused had locked up candidates hailing from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. They had collected the candidates' cellphones and directed them not to contact anyone from outside. The candidates were to appear for the test in Mysore, Davangere and Bangalore on Sunday.

The police had made arrangements to transport the candidates to Mysore and Davangere after freeing them, Mirji said.

Rajagopal Reddy had taken voluntary retirement from Vijaya Bank in 2005. A case is pending against him in the 13th ACMM court in the City in connection with the leakage of question papers of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences  in 2007.

Reddy, operating from a room in a lodge, used Comed-K seal and prepared fake question papers, Mirji said.

The suspects had appointed agents to identify potential candidates in different states. They would keep in touch with the candidates once the agents introduced them.

Preliminary investigations had revealed that the accused had employed two methods in extracting money from the candidates. One, they assured aspirants of securing post-graduate seats in prestigious colleges across Karnataka and collected Rs 11 lakh from each of them. Such seats in private medical private colleges cost up to Rs 60 lakh.

Second, they promised candidates of securing question papers a day before the examination and obtained money from them.

They would lock them up in apartment rooms, give them fake question papers and ask them to prepare. They would lock up parents too in separate rooms.

They collected cellphones of the candidates and their parents to prevent them from contacting others and released them the next day, directing the candidates to go to examination halls directly, Mirji said.

Thousands of candidates from all over the country appeared for Sunday’s Comed-K UGET in 105 centres across Karnataka.

Students who appeared for the test also complained of paucity of time to complete the mathematics paper.