Barkatpura Congress corporator Diddi Rambabu said that his son Dr D. Krishna had been called as a witness and was not a beneficiary in the scam.
“It was a case of mistaken identity. My son was caught by the CBI near the hotel in Chandigarh when three others ran away. After recording his statement, we are back in Hyderabad. He is not an accused in the case, only a witness.”
“Someone by the name of Ramesh had handed my son a SIM card and the same was revealed in the statement. Gurivi Reddy had come to my son with an offer to guide him in the exams for `20 lakh but my son had refused. Gurivi Reddy is known to my son as he was his senior in college. He made phone calls and tried to lure my son but he refused.”
He added, “Krishna wrote the exam as a genuine candidate. He isn’t named in the FIR. Even Gurivi Reddy and Ganga-dhar Reddy, who gave the name of beneficiaries to the CBI, said that my son had refused their offer.”
Dr Krishna said, “CBI officials served me a notice and recorded my statement and sent me away.”
The CBI is probing allegations that certain candidates who wrote the exam had allegedly paid `30 lakh to `40 lakh to Gangadhar Reddy and Gurivi Reddy.
An official said, “Compa-red to the Eamcet exam scam, they had improvised the system this time. In 2009, they were crude but in Chandigarh they used sophisticated equipment.”
The CBI recorded the sta-tements of many candida-tes including a house surg-eon working in Gandhi Ho-spital. Investigators said the statements of Shiva, Venkatashwara, Ramana, Ramesh, Krishna and Sid-hartha had been recorded so far. Most were Gurivi Reddy’s juniors in college. The latter had set up a control room at a hotel at Sector 35 in Chandigarh.
Accused in the case, Toll-ywood producer Gangad-har Reddy is a native of Srikalahasti and has claimed to have done his MS from Gandhi Medical College. Some of the suspected beneficiaries were his roommates.
So far 16 persons have been arrested in the case and most of them are from Kadapa, Nellore and Chittoor districts. One of the suspects, Kotesh, is still at large, said sources.
According to the CBI, the list of accused who have been arrested is as follows: P. Gurivi Reddy (Kadapa); Dr K. Gangadhar Reddy (Hyderabad); P. Bharat Chand (Tirupati Rural); N. Jagdish (Kadapa); P. Sidha-rtha (Kurnool); Aminul (Kadapa), G. Padma (Nell-ore); G. Sivageetha (Chitt-oor); Suchi Mamatha (Tir-upati); P. Manjula (Nello-re); V. Devika (Chittoor); G. Krishnaveni (Nellore): Re-humunisha (Kadapa): Ma-hendra (Kadapa); Thame-em Khan (Chittoor); Shaik Afroz (Nellore).