Seat-blocking scam: Enforcement Directorate seizes Rs 1.4 crore unaccounted cash from Bengaluru colleges | Bengaluru News

Bengaluru: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), probing the alleged seat blocking scam, recovered unaccounted cash of Rs 1.4 crore when they raided a few colleges in the city and related places last week.The searches were carried out at 17 places, including the office premises of BMS College of Engineering, Akash Institute of Engineering and Technology, and New Horizon College of Engineering. The premises of a few entities engaged in educational consultancy services and some private agents associated with the scam were also under the scanner. “Various documents related to money laundering and other digital devices were seized. The search proceedings revealed evidence with respect to widespread seat blocking and use of cash in the admission process in popular professional courses in private institutes. There is an extensive network of agents and educational consultancy service entities used to bring students for admission from across India to these institutes. The admission in management quota seats is done mostly in an opaque manner based on extraneous considerations such as cash,” the ED said.Earlier, the ED initiated an investigation on the basis of an FIR registered by the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) against the three colleges and unknown persons. It was alleged that these colleges colluded with unknown persons, obtained the log-in credentials of students registered with KEA, and blocked seats by opting for seats in their college in the name of students who were not actually going to take admission.As per the chargesheet filed by Malleswaram police in Feb, no students were admitted to the blocked seats for 2024, though option entries for 54 seats were made. Neither the students whose credentials were used nor the colleges knew about the scam, it read.However, police have not given a clean chit to the colleges as of now. “We have seized 17 mobile phones from the arrested persons. They were sent to the forensic science laboratory for data retrieval. The reports are expected soon. If we come across clues on the communications made between the accused and the college staff, we will relaunch the probe in a new direction. The colleges have to answer us why there was communication between them and the accused,” police said.