Mangaluru: Two famous colleges from the educational hub of Mangaluru, that have been known for churning out ‘state toppers’ are under the CID scanner, with regard to the PU Chemistry question paper leak case.

The CID sleuths conducted a simultaneous raid on eleven colleges across the state including two in Mangaluru – Expert PU College and Mahesh PU College on Friday.

The sleuths remained questioning the authorities of all the eleven colleges even on Saturday.

The other institutes are Narayana PU College in Ballari and Vidyaranyapura in Bengaluru; Sri Chaitanya PU College in Vidyaranyapura and Ballari; Deeksha Integrated in Yelahanka and Tumakuru; Presidency College in Kempapura; Brindavan College in Sanjay Nagar; Royal Concorde in Kalyan Nagar.

The raids were carried out based on the information provided by the three accused — K M Muralidhar, Anil Kumar and K S Ranganath — who were arrested on April 13. The accused had revealed to the investigators that they shared the question papers and key answers with the management of the colleges, who in turn passed the information on to a selected set of students. 

According to sources, more than 200 students including 50 plus girls are being questioned so far and had collected crucial information.

Leaked question papers were found in some of the students’ laptops as most of the colleges have provided laptops for the students at the time of joining, sources said.

The colleges used to pay around Rs 25 to 50 lakh per annum to procure question papers in advance, sources said.

It is said that the key players including the kingpin of the scam were in touch with these colleges for more than four years.

Some students opted to continue in the same institutes for higher studies are also under the radar of CID.

The CID sleuths have literally fortified the colleges and are interrogating each staff.

Interestingly, some of the colleges raided so far in Bangalore, are owned by Mangalore based businessmen.

One of college’s owner contested for MLC berth from a national party ticket last time, sources added.

As per sources, the CID anticipates involvement of more colleges in the paper leak racket.

The sleuths are only verifying documents and no arrests have been done so far.

However, the staff and higher-ups of all the eleven colleges have been refraining from commenting on the topic. 

When newskarnataka.com contacted Usha Prabha Nayak, Secretary of Expert College, she responded that she was not in a position to comment on the same as she was in New Delhi at the moment.

A source from Presidency College said that the CID presence was felt on the college campus over the last 20 days and that over the last few days the Principal of the College was on leave.

As per highly placed sources, the CID has also zeroed in on over 200 students who have scored above 87 per cent in the state.

The fact that some lecturers rom these eleven disputed collges were selected by the government for evaluation duty too has sparked a row.