Bengaluru Police arrest 10 people in connection with engineering seat blocking scam

According to police, the matter came to light on November 13 when KEA officials lodged a complaint at the Malleswaram police station, reporting a suspected seat-blocking scheme during the 2024-2025 undergraduate engineering admissions.

Bengaluru: Bengaluru police on Tuesday announced the arrest of ten people, including an outsourced employee of the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA), in connection with the alleged seat-blocking scam.

Dayananda, Bengaluru city police commissioner, said that the case was complex to understand, and the investigating team carried out an in-depth technical probing to connect the dots. The arrest of the suspects followed a complaint filed by the KEA administrative officer on November 13.

According to the FIR, unknown middlemen and a few private engineering colleges in Bengaluru colluded and deprived eligible candidates of government engineering seats (2,625). As the 2,625 seats were given to colleges as management seats, the institutes pocketed huge profits and caused substantial loss to the government.

Malleswaram police achieved a breakthrough after technical analysis, leading to the arrest of four people on November 28. Subsequently, police pinned down six more people.

Police identified the arrested as Avinash BS, 36; Tilak RG, 60; Noushad Alam, 42; Dilshad Alam, 33; Prakash SR, 42; Ravishankar, 56; Puneeth SL, 27; Shashikumar SK, 34; Sriharsh TM, 42; and Purushottam, 24.

Interrogation of the suspects revealed that the prime suspect, Avinash, working with the KEA, gave his accomplices the login credentials of the students who enrolled for counselling concerning engineering seats but took up different courses later, said the police.

The suspects used the login credentials and blocked the seats. Despite allotting seats at colleges to these blocked entries, they remained unfilled at the end as no admissions were done. Finally, all these seats were given to the colleges to use as management seats.

In some cases, the suspects approached graduate students with scholarship offers and made them appear for KCET exams. Later, the suspects obtained their login credentials and blocked a few seats, according to Dayananda.

“Investigations show that the suspects are also involved in blocking seats in other courses besides engineering. We are digging into the matter, and investigations are continuing,” Dayananda said.

According to police, Avinash was earlier involved in the medical seats blocking case. The other suspects were also involved in similar offences.

Police have seized 13 mobile phones and a few documents. They also found that the suspects had burnt three laptops used for carrying out the alleged scam. The investigation was supervised by Saidulu Adavath, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North), and Malleswaram ACP Pavan.