The student arrested in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) proxy case by city police was allegedly under “parental pressure” to study engineering and did not want to take the test this year, sources associated with the probe have said.

Neel Nakshatra Das, whose parents are both doctors, had allegedly used a proxy fixed by his father Dr Jyotirmoy Das in lieu of money to write the all-India test for admission into premier engineering institutes.

Neel, who left the exam centre after completing the attendance formalities, had secured 99.8 percentile, the third highest from Assam.

A police officer associated with the case told The Telegraph that Neel had told his interrogators that he wanted to take the JEE next year as he was not fully prepared. “We are trying to get to the bottom of the case but this is something he revealed during interrogation,” he said.

Mitradev Sarmah, who had filed the FIR which lead to the arrest of Neel, his father and three others on Wednesday, on the other hand, said Neel was interested in humanities, not science.

Sarmah, a former journalist and president of the Guwahati Nagarik Sanstha, said he filed the FIR at the Azara police station after he was approached by the father of one of Neel’s friend with a recorded audio clip of his conversation where the candidate admitted to using a proxy to write his paper.

Sarmah’s complaint was based on a phone call and a WhatsApp chat involving Neel where he purportedly revealed about using a proxy and the help extended by the invigilator, the police said.

Asked about the proxy candidate, additional deputy commissioner of police S.L. Baruah said: “So far we have arrested five persons and have got their remand for five days. But we have not managed to track down the proxy candidate.”

Kakoli Bezbaruah, a counsellor with coaching centre Global Edu Light, was arrested from Rupnagar here on Saturday, Baruah said.