cuttack if you are an engineering aspirant seeking a seat in any technical institute of the state through ecounselling beware chances are you will be in for a nasty surprise finding yourself offered a seat in a college that was not necessarily what you had opted for the suspicion that private engineering colleges across the state were engaged in cheating students by tweaking student preferences during the ecounselling process in their favour was confirmed by police crime branch on tuesday crime branch arrested the chairman of jhadeswar institute of engineering and technology jiet of balasore parmanand samantray and a clerk of the institution on charges of changing the original preferences of the students illegally in favour of their institution during the ecounselling of diploma engineering in 2010 the college authorities approached many students to facilitate them in the ecounselling process and then hacked their usernames and passwords informed crime branch sleuths taking advantage of the stolen password the college authorities later changed the original preference of college of the students in favour of jiet as a result of which the students were awarded seats in jiet the ecounselling process is common to all students appearing for the orissa joint engineering entrance examination ojeee the common entrance test for all engineering colleges affiliated to biju patnaik university of technology the umbrella organization for all private engineering collegesthe chairman of the engineering college along with one of its employee carried out the entire cyber crime computers of jiet engineering college were used to change the preferences of at least six students in favour of the particular college said crime branch additional director general abhay cyber crime cases have been lodged against the duo under section 418 419 and 420 cheating of ipc and section 66 c of information technology act password theft in 2010 at least 33 diploma engineering aspirants had complained about such illegal change in preferences the department found some truth in these allegations during an inquiry and had handed over the case to crime branch in october 2010 crime branch said many more colleges may also come under the purview of the investigation investigation of the case is still in progress we have arrested only two persons but the number can also increase in the future said abhaythe officials have cautioned the students not to share their password with any unknown person students should remain extra vigilant and alert if any individual or engineering college official approaches to help them in the ecounselling process said a crime branch officer