Dating : The Sylenham File

Chapter-7

CBI Headquarters, January, 2018.

“Come in Arthik, have a seat. You are assigned on the ATMA and CMAT cases I suppose. What do you want to talk about?”

“I require your permissions to attend the college as a student in disguise. I will form my own team of 10 on this case and their identities will only be known to me and you. The case will take 2 more years and in Jan 2020 you will have the file on your desk. I am certain to have your permission, Sir”, said Arthik in one breath with command and authority in his voice.

With Arthik’s past record the CBI Chief, Mr. Aru readily gave permissions.

“But don’t you think 2 years is a lot of time Agent Arthik?”

“Sir, I need to attend college”, he said with an unusual straight face and a thin voice. His practice to be in the new character had started.

Arthik pulled a few strings and secured his admission in SIM for academic session 2018–20 under reserved quota. The 10 agents were asked to try and bribe paper setters, officials of CMAT and ATMA committees and institutes that bid for authorised exam centres to discover a possible weak link. Mrs. Sarita Pandya worked in University Grants Committee and had strong connections. She offered a variety of services like paper leaking, forgery of scorecard and other documents, class-room cheating and direct entry through donation. Arthik wanted to create traceable proof so he asked all of the 10 agents to avail her services of forgery at the different time starting from February to May 2018.

In April, Arthik set up a meeting between Mr. Aru and BIMS director Dr. Sarkar. BIMS was the leading state-run management institute that had recently gained autonomy. Dr. Sarkar was advised to admit students that are domiciled in Maharashtra only via Maharashtra Entrance Test and was told that CBI suspected cases of fraudulent methods being used in ATMA and CMAT tests. The following day BIMS declared that they would only admit through MET scores which was a shock to many. Naturally all the agents got admitted to SIM with forged scorecards. The other students with suspected cases of fraud got admitted into SIM and other reputed colleges of Mumbai.