Citing lack of evidence, Faridkot court acquits 51 in 2008 PMET scam

The court of Faridkot judicial magistrate on Monday acquitted 51 persons, who were allegedly involved in a 17-year-old Pre-Medical Entrance Test (PMET) scam, citing lack of evidence.

The infamous PMET scam was unearthed in the entrance test held on June 22, 2008, and on July 4, 2008. The Faridkot police had registered an FIR under sections 420, 419, 467, 468, 471 and 34 of the IPC against students, imposters and doctors allegedly involved in the scam.

Faridkot judicial magistrate Sherryl Sohi acquitted all the accused in the case citing lack of evidence. The court observed that the police failed to establish a direct link between the accused and direct evidence against them to prove their case. The acquitted included students and doctors belonging to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Chandigarh and Delhi.

The court had already acquitted 10 other accused, including six students, in this case earlier.

The matter came to light after police identified 27 imposters in PMET 2008 conducted by the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) at Faridkot. As per the police investigation, the students had taken the services of intelligent students by paying them heavy amounts to appear in the PMET examination on their behalf.

A special investigation team (SIT) was constituted to probe this case, which filed a chargesheet against the 56 accused in 2011.

Later, Faridkot police identified nine gangs operating in Punjab and helping candidates in getting admission to medical colleges using various methods of cheating. Police had claimed that three of the kingpins are doctors of reputed hospitals and others run coaching centres in Chandigarh, Jalandhar, and Ludhiana.

The police had claimed as per the modus operandi, one group was assigned the job of arranging imposters, the other was tasked to arrange for the real candidates interested in qualifying in the PMET through impersonation, and a third group was supposed to transport the imposters to the venue of the examination. The fourth was assigned the responsibility for a comfortable stay and smooth entry of the imposters into the examination centre after replacing the photographs of the real candidates on the admit card with their photographs.

Police had alleged that that these centres charged ₹15-20 lakh from each candidate to ensure admission in medical colleges by getting others to impersonate them. An imposter medico was paid ₹5-6 lakh.

The racketeers had also succeeded in getting the question paper of the PMET leaked before it was held. They swapped the answer sheets of real candidates with those prepared by them.